AN EXPERT SYSTEM APPROACH TO CONTAINER SHIP LAYOUT DESIGN

Sebnem Helvacioglu and Mustafa Insel , Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey Int. Shipbuild. Progr., 50, no. 1 & 2 (2003) pp. 19-34 Received: February 2002 Accepted: January 2003

Ship design applications are carried out mainly by human experts who generally utilise computerised deterministic analysis techniques. Application of stochastic methods, and formalisation of heuristic methods in computer aided ship design have not been widely utilised yet. This work investigates whether such a heuristic method, namely expert system approach, can be satisfactorily applied into ship design. An expert system program package called ALDES (Accommodation Layout Design Expert System) was developed by using CLIPS expert system shell in order to asses the current approach. Preliminary dimensions of a container ship were calculated by a heuristic approach supported by a database of similar ships, empirical formulation, and deterministic analysis techniques. The hull was subdivided into main compartments by locating decks, double bottom, and transverse bulkheads. The number of crew was calculated by utilising manning regulations, then the superstructure layout was developed by assigning spaces for access, passageways, public and private rooms. Two cases were selected to test the current approach: firstly the effects of design heuristics were analysed in an evacuation analysis, and secondly a preliminary concept design for a fast containership was conducted. In conclusion, this study presents a case study approach in which an expert system is applied into ship design domain successfully with layout design emphasis.

1. Introduction Expert systems (ESs) have found a wide application area in engineering applications along with the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) since 1980s [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Ship design is a complex engineering process due to requirement of large expertise and its iterative nature. It also requires a wide dynamic knowledge base as both national and international rules and regulations are updated every year. Because

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An expert system approach to container ship layout design

of these interrelated characteristics of ship design, it may be accepted as a suitable application domain for ESs. In the current work, an ES program, called ALDES (Accommodation Layout Design Expert System), has been developed to investigate this approach, and application of ESs to ship design is examined through a case study approach. ALDES has been established using CLIPS expert system shell, an object oriented visual programming environment, and a general purposed CAD tool.

2. Background The result of a design process is a specification of a proposed object to fulfil a predefined set of requirements within a set of environmental, regulatory, technical, economic, social, ethic and physical constraints [7]. Design of an engineering artefact is usually carried out by an analysis-synthesis-evaluation cycle. In the design of integrated systems, an overall analysis is usually not possible and the solution is divided into a number of manageable parts [2]. These parts can then be analysed individually and combined to give an overall solution. If the individual parts are not fully independent, integration stage is performed in an iterative method. Ship design involves a wide range of tasks; hence integration task is very demanding. Evans design spiral was the first structured methodology in ship design [8]. However, its limitations were soon realized, and computer assisted techniques were consequently developed and utilized as universal tools [1, 3, 7]. At first, computer technology was used for simple applications facilitating tedious manual tasks in the ship design. But lately, researchers have been developing models based on AI techniques and domain knowledge as well as the procedural analysis approaches. Knowledge based design is a model of design process in computer environment in an attempt to capture and render operable human knowledge about the domain. The goal is to represent knowledge in such a way that it is comprehensible to both human and the computer [9]. Facility layout problem refers to design process of a layout for production or service facilities. The interest in the facility layout and location problems in the current work is oriented towards exploration of the techniques and methods that can be adopted for layout design of ship accommodation. Some steps of Systematic Layout Planning (SLP) [10] technique have been utilised to develop an accommodation block layout for the current work.

3. Knowledge base The knowledge base is a part of the expert system, which contains the knowledge and expertise associated with a particular domain. The general capability of any ES is

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determined by the quality of the associated knowledge base [2]. A number of issues about knowledge have been evaluated during the development of the current system. Knowledge elicitation The main problems associated with the development of ES applications are nearly all concerned with the process of obtaining the information required to construct the application of a specific knowledge base. This process of extracting knowledge from either human or non-human sources is often called knowledge elicitation, and is of fundamental importance in the development of ES applications. In the current work, interviewing of several domain experts, as well as extracting knowledge from reference books and technical regulations for container ship design such as SOLAS [11], ILO [12] and national regulations [13] has been utilised to develop a knowledge base. Interviews have lead into compilation of heuristics, good practices, accepted standards, and judgemental reasoning within container ship design domain. Meta Knowledge Knowledge about design consists of not only rules about how to do tasks but also on when to perform the tasks. For example, a designer will know when to calculate weights in order to check weight-displacement balance. This knowledge about order of tasks is probably the main difference between a designer and spiral based iterative design. Designers way of process must also involve a conflict resolution, e.g. the stability calculations may indicate an increase in the beam, while powering calculations may require a decrease in the beam. This type of knowledge can be referred to as meta-knowledge and can only be extracted through interviews. Knowledge Representation The basis of knowledge representation in a computer is the organisation and storage of knowledge, which the expert system uses to solve a problem. In the current work, two different types of knowledge representation methods have been employed those being an object oriented hierarchical database, which was utilized for ship components and production rules, which were used to define the expert system. Object oriented database enables the program to locate each entity, which may be a space or physical object belonging to a class derived from a class tree. Characteristics about an entity such as dimensions, volume, weight, etc. have been represented as properties, and calculations performed on each object, knowledge, have been represented as methods, which can be inherited through class definitions. Production rules have been adopted due to the nature of ship design knowledge in the expert system. The heuristic knowledge acquired through interviews has been represented as rules, while facts have been utilized to represent dynamic memory. A production system has the form:

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An expert system approach to container ship layout design

IF [condition] THEN [conclusion] The condition part of the rule must be true, to use the conclusion part. Conclusion and condition relate to the state of the global database. If the condition is true according to the working memory, then the conclusion may be added to the working memory. Reasoning Reasoning is the process of creating new facts from existing facts, which may indicate a property of an object or may indicate some type of calculation is required. Production rules are used to perform reasoning managed by interference engine of expert system. In this study CLIPS inference engine has been used with depth first search algorithm. Explanation of Reasoning This capability is provided through the compile editor of the CLIPS watch facility and allows for the Fired rules, asserted and retracted facts to be seen while a program is running.

4. Application Ship layout design, being a complex problem, is often solved by the utilisation of heuristics. Typically only some aspects of the problem are considered and one or more approximate solutions to the problem are created using this restricted version. The resulting solutions are then adjusted to create an acceptable layout and the best resulting solution is implemented. As a pilot application, an ES for container ship layout design has been developed to investigate expert system approach in ship design. Two main tasks in the container ship layout design have been selected instead of overall design: compartmentation i.e. division of the ship into compartments, and arrangement of the superstructure. The former task allocates functional/spatial units, which make up ship volume; while the latter task involves the layout design of one of these functional units. A concept model of these tasks is illustrated in Figure 1, where the roles of ship design process, ES, and knowledge base are shown inclusive of the reasoning logic. For example, the model includes the determination of number of crew required which in turn effects both compartmentation and the superstructure layout.

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Figure 1. Conceptual model of ALDES.

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An expert system approach to container ship layout design

Two programming paradigms were employed in the development of ALDES: a Pascal based visual programming environment was utilised as an interface shell and CLIPS expert system shell was used as the inference engine (see Figure 2). The interface shell has functions to input data from the user, to output the results, to keep a database of objects in the design process, to visualise the layout, and to perform some procedural tasks, such as resistance, propulsion calculations, calculation for number of containers in the hull etc. This paradigm enabled the expert system part to operate outside of all usual computerised operations and focus only in the expert system heuristics. ES works in a DLL format communicating with user through the interface shell. It keeps its own agenda and facts list which is modified by the interface shell whenever it is required. Events, usually calculations, are fired at the interface shell by checking fact list of CLIPS.

Figure 2. System layout. In addition to ES utilisation a number of knowledge based design techniques were adopted in the development of ALDES:

 Sebnem Helvacioglu and Mustafa Insel , i)

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Object oriented programming paradigm was utilised for the representation of ship and its components in the interface shell. Hence, ship consists of a hierarchical database of objects. Each object, derived from a class, has properties such as length, width, depth, volume, weight and methods such as weight calculation, size calculation, procedure of moving etc. In the establishment of the database, object oriented programming paradigm was utilised with inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation techniques. With these techniques it was possible to represent ownership and neighbouring relations, which allows for the definition and utilisation of topological relationships of ship sub-components. In this hierarchical object tree, each object has an owner and relations to other objects, e.g. left, above, below. As an illustration, when a cabin is defined it belongs to owner deck (Parent) should have been defined. Similarly, surrounding cabins (brothers and sisters) may also be defined, and obviously a cabin will have objects (as its children) such as a door derived from door class.

ii)

Ship has been divided into sub-components in a varying level of detail. This hierarchical decomposition may be explained by choosing accommodation part as shown in Figure 3. In this figure accommodation part is chosen as the first level decomposition, in its entirety. At the second level each deck of the accommodation part can separately be taken into account. At the third level a specific cabin at a selected deck may be examined. Decomposition has a general disadvantage as it causes to loose the interactions between sub-components. This has been overcomed by building ES heuristic rules for the design of each component to include the interactions. As a result each component may be designed independently but it must include the effects of other sub-components. For example, accommodation block has an algorithm to define the size but it also takes engine room size into account, as two bays of containers are taken on top of engine room and in front of accommodation block, if the engine room size is large enough. Accommodation block design is updated whenever the engine room size changes. iii) A technique called systematic layout planning has been utilized to derive the relationships between the cabins in the layout. Table 1 shows an example relational chart, which was derived from human flow diagrams for daily functions, emergency operations, and from considerations of fire, flooding, social relations and from heuristics extracted from the interviews [2]. This relational chart was utilised in the layout design process as production rules. The number designation used in Table 1 are explained by Table 2 and Table 3.

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An expert system approach to container ship layout design

Figure 3. Decomposition.

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Table 1. Relational chart for the sample ship.

1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 2 A 3 U E 4 E E U 5 O A O E 6 U O E U U 7 A E U I I U 8 I I U I U U U 9 U O I U U I U U 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 E I U U U U U U U O O I O U E U U U U U U E O U I O O I O I I O O I I I I I I I I U O O O O O O O O O O O O E X X X X X X X X X X X O X U X X X X X X X X X X X X E I E I O O I I I I I I I I U U I X E U O O E U O O O O O O U O U U U U U U U X X X X X X X X X U O U A U U X X X X X X X X X X X U U U U U U U U X X X X X X X X X X X U U U U A U X I U X X X X X X X X X X X U X U I U X U U U U X X X U U E U U E O I I U U X U U X U U U X A E U I I U A U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U X X X X X X X X X X X X I I U I I X U U U I U X U U U I I I

U U U U U U U U I I

U U U U U U U U U U U U U X A U U U U U U U U X U X U X U X U U U X X

Relations: A: Absolutely necessary, E: Especially important, I: Important, O: Ordinary importance, U: Unimportant, X: Undesirable

Table 2. Crew members and cabins related to crew according to the program.
No Crew Member Duty 2 Oceangoing-master 4 Oceangoing-chief-officer 8 Oceangoing-watchkeeping officer 3 Unlimited-chief-engineer 6 Unlimited-second-engineer 9 Unlimited-engineer-officer 7 Radio-officer 11 Electrician 22 Boatswain Total Number of Crew: 22 Number 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 No 22 22 22 19 25 22 22 22 Crew Member Duty Able-seaman Ordinary-seaman Deckboy Cook Steward Donkyman Oiler Wiper Number 2 3 1 1 1 1 3 1 -

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An expert system approach to container ship layout design

Table 3. The other compartments in the accommodation part.

No 5 1 24 27 12 17 13 10 14 Name of the Section Owner Bridge Radio-room Deck-office Engine-office Officer-dining-room Officer-day-room Pilot Pantry Number 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 No 16 18 15 Name of the Section Galley Hospital Crew-mess-room Store-3 Store-2 Store-1 Laundry Cold-room Dry-provision Number 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

20 21 26

4.1. Structure of knowledge base ALDES consists of three integrated task modules of ship design. Task Module A: General arrangement plan Task Module A aims to generate a general arrangement plan by decomposing ship concept into hierarchical components such as bow, cargo holds, engine room, stern and accommodation space. Only first level of decomposition is utilised in this module. Ship size is calculated by use of sub-compartments integration and by taking considerations of total volume, area and location requirements. Sub-tasks as listed below are performed a number of times in a non-orderly iterative manner: i) Ship main dimensions are determined form deck area, and volume requirements. ii) Ship resistance, engine power, propeller efficiency, engine room size and fuel consumption are calculated. iii) Double bottom, main deck and main transverse bulkheads are located. iv) The accommodation part is determined, the size and the number of the accommodation decks are calculated. General heuristics are used to calculate crew size. v) First approach to weight and weight distribution is made and updated as more data becomes available. vi) Preliminary assessment of stability is made and ballast requirement is determined. vii) Container capacity under main deck is calculated. The basic requirements to start the design are speed, capacity (number of TEU), ship range and initial hull form of the ship. These inputs are handled by Interface shell and are fed into CLIPS as facts.

 Sebnem Helvacioglu and Mustafa Insel , Task Module B: Crew number calculation

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This module was developed to determine required crew number. The knowledge base of the program was prepared by extracting the knowledge from regulations [14]. Crew number module seeks gross tonnage (GRT), engine power and range of the designed ship to fire the rules. Owner selected crew; number of cooks, stewards, electricians, etc. can be entered as preferences by the user. This information is then utilised in the next modules to define the superstructure layout. Task Module C: Accommodation layout Accommodation layout is performed in three steps: 1. requirement definition, i.e. determination of required cabin numbers and their sizes, 2. arrangement of cabins, i.e. relations and locations, 3. calculation of a cost function. The first step of accommodation layout defines name, statue and area for both crew members cabins, public rooms, and other spaces such as stores, galleys, etc. Area requirement of each room is calculated as required by ILO and IMO regulations, and common practices A Relational Chart is incorporated to define the topology of the accommodation block. The information from this chart and space requirements for each cabin is used to decide deck levels for each cabin. When decks are fully defined the cabins in each deck are located, and final sizes are determined. A cost factor is calculated for different scenarios in order to provide a ranking facility between various design strategies. Design strategy can easily be altered by making changes in the meta-knowledge. 4.2. Case studies Case study approach has been adopted to assess and validate the program. Two applications of program were developed: Firstly a container ship with 750 TEU was selected and two alternative layouts were developed by varying decision rules. A cost function was defined as the distance for every personnel from their room to a safety point, which is assumed to be on the third deck acting as the boat deck for evacuation. Secondly, a search for an unusual containership carrying 1000 TEU at 30 knots speed was made. Case Study I: Effect of design strategy One of the main design concerns is to find answers to what-if questions. This approach has been adopted in a large number of design studies only in the microlevel, i.e. effect of a variable such as beam, depth etc. is investigated and the effect of this change on the overall design and cost function is observed. From this information,

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An expert system approach to container ship layout design

sensitivity of the design for this parameter can be determined, or design can be optimised for this parameter. In this study, a fundamentally different approach is adopted whereby instead of changing a design parameter the design strategy is changed. In the first case study a containership of 750 passenger at 16 knots is developed. The accommodation block is developed and a deck layout is given as an example in Figure 4a. As a change in the design strategy, the heuristics about the locations of doors for each cabin has been changed. For the first case, the cabin doors were positioned in the nearest position to the staircase or safety point. In the second case the doors were located without the minimum distance rules. Typical door positions are given in Figure 4a and Figure 4b.

Figure 4 a and b. Example deck for the second case. The cost function was chosen as the total evacuation distance for the whole crew. And it was calculated with respect to the crews normal operating/resting locations, i.e. working posts and living areas. A few sample results from the outputs are given in Table 4 for comparison purposes. These two simple case studies illustrate that with a computer system such as ALDES, ship design strategy changes can be evaluated with respect to the selected cost function.

 Sebnem Helvacioglu and Mustafa Insel , Table 4. Comparison of two cases.

Short distance case Person : donkeyman distance from centre to door : 4665 distance from door to point : 1073 distance from point to stair : 5423 distance from stair to deck : -4000 total distance : 15161 person : oceangoing-master distance from centre to door : 3033 distance from door to stair : 1011 distance from stair to deck : 6000 total distance : 10044 Person : steward distance from centre to door : 1550 distance from door to point : 1073 distance from point to stair : 943 distance from stair to deck : -4000 total distance : 7566 Person : owner distance from centre to door : 6308 distance from door to stair : 2926 distance from stair to deck : 6000 total distance : 15235 Person : radio-officer distance from centre to door : 2550 distance from door to stair : 626 distance from stair to deck : 4000 total distance : 7176

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Long distance case Person : donkeyman distance from centre to door : 4422 distance from door to point : 2110 distance from point to stair : 5423 distance from stair to deck : -4000 total distance : 15956 person : oceangoing-master distance from centre to door : 3335 distance from door to stair : 1930 distance from stair to deck : 6000 total distance : 11265 person : steward distance from centre to door : 450 distance from door to point : 2110 distance from point to stair : 943 distance from stair to deck : -4000 total distance : 7503 Person : owner distance from centre to door : 4250 distance from door to stair : 4930 distance from stair to deck : 6000 total distance : 15180 Person : radio-officer distance from centre to door : 2550 distance from door to stair : 626 distance from stair to deck : 4000 total distance : 7176

Case Study II: Concept design of unusual ships Concept design of unusual ships is difficult to model with the usual design spiral. This task is usually performed by the designers heuristics combined with the available analysis techniques. As an alternative, a concept exploration model can be defined [15]. The main difficulty in concept exploration is the quantity of data and the post-processing especially if the number of variables is large. In the current work a variation of concept exploration model was used for concept design of a fast containership carrying approximately 1000 TEU at 30 knots. In order to reduce the amount of data produced with concept exploration, some of the variables are chosen by heuristics rules. Only the effect of number of piers and rows were left for the designer. A cost criterion was defined as fuel consumption per TEU-mile, and a selection process was performed. Figure 5 shows general arrangement of 1000 TEU 30 knot containership as defined in ALDES and Figure 6 shows fuel consumption per TEU-Mile and GM/Breadth ratio by change of number of tiers (Ny) and rows (Nz)

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An expert system approach to container ship layout design

without ballast weight change. Smallest number of container rows and tiers results in least cost as expected from a long slender ship with high powered ship concept, but stability criteria, as GM/B Ratio, dictates increase in number of rows. Large number of tiers is ruled out, and a compromise must be reached by addition of ballast as well as increasing number of rows.

Figure 5. General arrangement.

Figure 6. The result of the case study.

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In this study, development of an expert system called ALDES has been presented where the adopted system model implements logical reason methods both for generative and interpretative knowledge. It is shown that such a system can have a great potential for utilisation in the ship layout design process. Hierarchical decomposition of ship object into sub-components has proved to be a very useful tool. This approach allowed for the development of program modules to design each sub-component independently and yet also allowed for the utilisation of heuristics for integration. The main advantage of this approach over the conventional design spiral is to include integration heuristics within each sub-component design module. Use of the calculated evacuation distance as a cost function is found to be useful. As an illustration it was applied for two cases to examine the effect of changing the design strategy with respect to cabin door locations on the cost function. The main advantage of the expert system appears to be the ability to design a ship simply generating a general arrangement plan with the backing of rule, knowledge, and calculation base, similar to the way a domain expert performs his design. Such an approach also increases the efficiency of communication between the expert system and the user.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to express their thanks to domain experts; S. Aka, S. Br, O. Day, A. Demirsoylu, G. Gke, T. Grsel, A.Y. Odabas, H. S ,manyazc, D.G.M. Watson, , ,is Welsh who shared their expertise on containership design through knowledge extraction interviews.

References [1] Welsh, M., A Computer Aided Conceptual Ship Design System Incorporating Expert Knowledge, PhD Thesis, Department of Marine Technology, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, September, 1989. Helvacioglu, S., Utilisation of expert systems in container ship design: accommodation layout design expert system (ALDES), PhD thesis, Department of Naval Architecture, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, July, 2001. Cort, A., and Hills, W., Space Layout design Using Computer Assisted Methods, Naval Engineers Journal, May, 1987, pp. 249-260. Koh, H.S., A method for computer-aided general arrangement designof ships, Ship Technology Research, Vol. 38, 1991, pp. 140-156.

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An expert system approach to container ship layout design Cleland, G, Hills, W., A knowledge-based systems approach to the layout design of large made-to-order products, J.S. Gero and F. Sudweeks (editors), Artificial Intelligence in Design, 1994, pp. 257-274. Chao, K-M., Guenov, M., Hills, B., Smith, B., Buxton, I., Jsai, C-F., An expert system to generate associativity data for layout design, Artificial Intelligence in Engineering, 11, 1997, pp. 191-196. Duffy, A.H.B., Computer Modelling of Early Stage Numerical Ship Design Knowledge and Expertise, PhD Thesis, Department of Ship and Marine Technology, University of Strathclyde, February, 1986. Evans, J.H., Basic design concepts, Naval Engineers Journal, November, 1959, pp. 71-4, 671-678. Coyne, R. D., Rosenman, M. A., Radford, A. D., Balachandran, M. and Gero, J. S., Knowledge-Based Design Systems, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1990. Muther, R., Systematic Layout Planning, pp. 15-120, Industrial Education Institute Mass, Boston, 1961. SOLAS, International Maritime Organisation, IMO Publications, London, 1997. ILO, American Bureau of Shipping, ILO Conventions Surveys, Check Sheets, 1998. SBG, Safety Code for Shipping Enterprises, See-Berufsgenossenschaft, Edition 1981, edited February 1982 by Germanischer Lloyd, 1982. Gemiadamlari Mevzuat, T.C. Basbakanlk, Denizcilik Mstesarlg, Deniz , , Ulastrmas Gn. Md., Basbakanlk Basmevi, Ankara, 1997. , , Nethercote, W.C.E., Schmitke, K.T., A Concept Exploration Model for SWATH Ships, TRINA, 1981, pp. 113-130

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