Become a Member Today!
How smart early design avoids costly ship structural failure
Presentation by Robert Keane, Senior Leader with forty three years of ship design experience
If the concept design engineer/team does not adequately size the ship in early concept design, because of legacy design practices based on a false mindset that ‘smaller is better/cheaper’, and legacy design tools consistently under predict critical seaway loads in early design phases, the later stage structural design engineer/team is forced to design light weight structures.
These may be minimally feasible initially, but have a decades-long record of failing in-service, and are labor intensive to construct, maintain and modernize. This results in the U.S. Navy having huge unnecessary expenses in total ownership cost (TOC) and the loss of availability of much needed warships. At the 2022 Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) Maritime Conference in Houston, the chairs of the Hydrodynamics, Structures, Ship Design and Ship Production committees agreed to initiate a series of webinars to address these systemic technical failures, starting with design for seaway loads and efficient structures in early ship design.
This presentation, based on a 2017 ASNE paper by the author and coauthors, initiates and sets the framework for and illuminates the importance of the webinar series.
Available within 50 miles of Frederick, Maryland, or by remote video teleconference. 45 minutes.
Your Speaker
Robert Keane
Robert Keane, principal of Ship Design USA, Inc., has over forty three years of ship design experience, thirty five years of which were in technical leadership positions at the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).
During twenty one years as a member of the Federal Senior Executive Service (SES), he served in senior leadership positions as the U.S. Navy’s Chief Naval Architect, Chief of Ship Design, Director of Ship Survivability & Technical Authority for Total Ship System Engineering (TSSE).
In his last position at NAVSEA before retiring in 2002, he was the Executive Director for Surface Ship Design and Systems Engineering. In this position, he was responsible for the design of all Navy surface ships & craft from pre-acquisition concept design studies, through Analyses of Alternatives (AoA), preliminary & contract design, detail design & construction, & in-service support. His Navy-led design teams successfully completed over thirty five major naval ship contract designs.