STUDY ON THE AUTOMATIC STIFFENER LAYOUT METHOD UNDER CAD ENVIRONMENT

This paper presents a practical method to lay out stiffeners automatically on web frames. A combinatorial tree model is adopted to represent the stiffener layout process; a layout problem is converted to the tree searching problem. The pattern information on the stiffener layout, obtained through the investigation about the design results of actual ship, are introduced as a heuristics to explore the combinatorial tree in an intelligent way. The method was implemented through computer programs to the CAD/system and practised solutions were obtained by the system in the reasonable processing time.