A Scoping Review on Simulation-based Design Optimization in Marine Engineering: Trends, Best Practices, and Gaps

TL;DR

This review analyzes the current state of simulation-based design optimization in marine engineering, highlighting prevalent methods, application areas, and identifying gaps and future research opportunities.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of SBDO applications in marine engineering, emphasizing trends, common practices, and areas needing methodological improvements.

Findings

SBDO mainly applied to vessel hulls and components

Deterministic single-objective methods are most common

Need for more multi-objective and stochastic approaches

Abstract

This scoping review assesses the current use of simulation-based design optimization (SBDO) in marine engineering, focusing on identifying research trends, methodologies, and application areas. Analyzing 277 studies from Scopus and Web of Science, the review finds that SBDO is predominantly applied to optimizing marine vessel hulls, including both surface and underwater types, and extends to key components like bows, sterns, propellers, and fins. It also covers marine structures and renewable energy systems. A notable trend is the preference for deterministic single-objective optimization methods, indicating potential growth areas in multi-objective and stochastic approaches. The review points out the necessity of integrating more comprehensive multidisciplinary optimization methods to address the complex challenges in marine environments. Despite the extensive application of SBDO in marine engineering, there remains a need for enhancing the methodologies' efficiency and robustness. This review offers a critical overview of SBDO's role in marine engineering and highlights opportunities for future research to advance the field.