A Fuzzy Metric for Assessing the Producibility of Straightening in Early Design

Since several years, the large shipyards use more and more thin plates to build up stiffened panels in order to decrease the structural weight. The major problem relating to the utilization of thin plates is the occurrence of welding distortions that have to be eliminated for esthetical and service reasons. This straightening operation involves significant costs and it seems thus important to characterize its economical impact on the global hull fabrication.
This paper presents a way to minimize cost in shipbuilding industry by the implementation of a producibility fuzzy metric in order to obtain a better knowledge of the straightening process. Attention has been focused on the definition of fuzzy rules by experts but also on the optimisation of the decision surface to reduce the error compared to actual measurement points.