Current research interests include the use of techniques from artificial intelligence and soft computing in ship design and shipbuilding market forecasting; the development and evaluation of techniques to minimize the introduction of nonindigenous species through ships’ ballast water; and the development of methods, software, and techniques for concurrent marine design.
Methods for Ship Design. Research has investigated the use of a set-based design approach with a hybrid agent metaphor to organize human designers and software agents to support the design communication and negotiation [1, 2, 8]. Current work involves multicriterion optimization design applications [7].
Environmental marine engineering. Full-scale testing has evaluated the effectiveness of various types of ballast water filtration to reduce the probability of the introduction of nonindigenous species through ballast water [5, 6]. Work underway is investigating a new ship concept to eliminate the use of water ballast in the traditional sense. CFD studies of ballast exchange effectiveness are also underway.
Shipbuilding market forecasting. Studies have involved the use of neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms [3] to improve the effectiveness of shipbuilding market forecasting.
Automatic control. Past research has included the development of fuzzy and adaptive autopilots for ship and AUV path control, the application of multivariable integral control to ship bridge control, and the use of sensor failure detection filters and supervisory algorithms to improve dynamic positioning of offshore platforms in deep water.
