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Virginia Tech

Manning Analysis in Naval Ship Concept Design

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The total cost of ownership of a naval ship is largely influenced by decisions made during concept design. In recent years the US Navy has undertaken numerous initiatives to reduce total ownership cost. This has prompted particular interest in reducing manning, as this is the largest single expenditure in total ownership cost. Normally ships are designed and then a study is performed to determine their required manning, but manning has a significant design impact and designs can either be too small to accommodate necessary manning or too large and costly if manning is overestimated. Manpower analysis implemented early in the design process and included in design synthesis could significantly minimize total ownership cost while optimizing ship design performance. The Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech has developed a Multi-Objective Genetic Optimization process to aid in ship concept exploration. This thesis describes a manning model created to be incorporated into this ship synthesis and optimization. DDG-51 guided missile destroyer manning is used as a baseline for a guided missile destroyer (DDGx) concept exploration. ISMAT (Integrated Simulation Manning Analysis Tool) discrete event manning tool is used to decompose complex ship operations into functions and tasks to build scenarios and assign crewmembers to accomplish maintenance and ship operations and ultimately calculate manning requirements as a function of ship mission, system, size, automation and maintenance strategy. The manning model results are then linked to the ship synthesis model and design optimization to determine an estimated crew number for a particular ship design. This thesis demonstrates that a manning estimation tool can effectively be linked to a naval ship concept exploration process and have a significant impact on selected designs.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Ocean Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2014

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Velez, Eric Joel
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Brown, Alan J.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Neu, Wayne L.
  • Greene, Jon Alan

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:3049
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/49150

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Velez, Eric Joel. Manning Analysis in Naval Ship Concept Design. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/49150