Machine Learning for Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering

TL;DR

This paper reviews how machine learning algorithms are applied in naval architecture, ocean, and marine engineering, highlighting current applications, datasets, features, and future research directions in the field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of ML applications in marine engineering, detailing datasets, features, and optimization methods, and suggests future research pathways.

Findings

ML algorithms are effectively used for wave prediction and damage detection.

Datasets and features are crucial for model accuracy in marine applications.

Future research should focus on data integration and model optimization.

Abstract

Machine Learning (ML) based algorithms have found significant impact in many fields of engineering and sciences, where datasets are available from experiments and high fidelity numerical simulations. Those datasets are generally utilized in a machine learning model to extract information about the underlying physics and derive functional relationships mapping input variables to target quantities of interest. Commonplace machine learning algorithms utilized in Scientific Machine Learning (SciML) include neural networks, regression trees, random forests, support vector machines, etc. The focus of this article is to review the applications of ML in naval architecture, ocean, and marine engineering problems; and identify priority directions of research. We discuss the applications of machine learning algorithms for different problems such as wave height prediction, calculation of wind loads on ships, damage detection of offshore platforms, calculation of ship added resistance, and various other applications in coastal and marine environments. The details of the data sets including the source of data-sets utilized in the ML model development are included. The features used as the inputs to the ML models are presented in detail and finally, the methods employed in optimization of the ML models were also discussed. Based on this comprehensive analysis we point out future directions of research that may be fruitful for the application of ML to the ocean and marine engineering problems.