Assembly unit partitioning for hull structure in shipbuilding

In order to solve the problem that low automatic degree to the block assembly process design will negatively influence construction cycle time and construction quality in shipbuilding, this paper presents a newly developed determination system of assembly units for the hull structure. Firstly, the assembly information model of a hull block which includes the part information and the linkage information between parts is proposed following the structural features and assembly process of the hull structure. Secondly, the assembly relation matrix is established on the basis of the fuzzy assessment rule and then the fuzzy clustering method to analyze partition of assembly units is given out. Thirdly, through analyzing the assembly ability of hull structures, the set of evaluating indexes is founded whose weights are decided by an analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Meanwhile, the model for the assessment is provided by fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) and the comprehensive assessment values of assembly partition schemes can be computed to judge the final optimization scheme. A block assembly is taken as an example to verify the proposed method, and the results show that it is an effective method for solving the partition problem of hull structures.