Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering

Course Overview

The academic focus areas consist of two major divisions as follows: Marine Mechanics, Engineering for the marine environment requires the analysis of complex systems including their hydrodynamic charecteristics, strucural integreity, and dynamic responses. Marine mechanics is at the heart of these analyses and involves the study of the fundamental physics of marine systems along with the development and use of analysis tools. Whether the marine system is a ship, an offshore structure for oil and gas recovery, or an energy harvesting device, their design requires the same basic analysis tools of applied mechanics and numerical modeling. Marine Systems Design, The naval architect's role in advanced marine design may be one of applying the latest design methods to specific design issues or one of overall design integration and leadership of integrated product/process development teams. Naval architects may also have the leading roles in the management of marine systems. The unifying philosophy of the Department's study in this area is that of multi-discipline engineering and concurrent design from early in the design process of the performance, manufacture, and the life-cycle support of a design. Manufacturing considerations are an integral part of the design process. marine design today is often conducted with cross-functional integrated product development teams. Specify syudy within this area can emphasize overall design, marine engineering, maritime systems management, ship production, or optimization methods and design under uncertainty. Marine Robotics and Controls, Marine robots cannot use GPS since they operate underwater. Therefore, it is necessary for robots to use computer vision and image processing in conjunction with time-synchronized acoustic navigation for autonomously mapping their environment and navigating in it. This technology has provided the foundation for related research efforts for autonomous undersea vehicles and ground vehicles, automotive active safety situational awareness, and autonomous ship hull inspection. Development of control algorithms and strategies is an integral part of creating autonomous robots. In addition to the robot applications, there are significant activities in control system development and optimization for marine and automotive propulsion systems, fuel cells, and energy storage devices.