Early stage routing of distributed ship service systems for vulnerability reduction

Warships rely on multiple distributed systems to function and perform their tasks. Vulnerability is a major driver in the design of these distributed systems. Aspects such as: the vessel and system component arrangement; the redundancy of system components; and the topology and routing of cables, ducts, piping and shafts to a large extent determine the ability of the ship to remain operational after incurring damage. The topology and routing of the connections within and between these distributed systems is often only addressed in later stages of the ship design, at which time changes to the general arrangement of the vessel and the distributed system components become difficult and costly. Earlier insight into the interrelations between the system’s vulnerability, the distributed system routings, and the vessel and system arrangements is thus deemed a critical step in designing robust distributed systems and ultimately more resilient warships. To address this, we propose a novel method for the early stage routing of ship distributed systems for vulnerability reduction. The approach uses network descriptions of the vessel layout and the distributed system topology to model both the routing and vulnerability problems. The paper outlines the modelling approach as well as the algorithms used. The usefulness of the approach as an early stage design tool is demonstrated by using it to design the routing for multiple (e.g. electrical, chilled water) distributed systems of a notional warship.