Design and Operational Enhancement through Integrated Recoverability Model Feedback
By John A. Waltham-Sajdak & R. Gregg Fresa
Naval warships operate in a multi-objective and multi-mission operational area and rely on advanced multi-disciplinary technologies to operate seamlessly to provide integrated functionality. Too often however, when threat or accidental damage occurs, critical systems fail to function due to design flaws or because the ships force lacks the information required to interact effectively. It is the purpose of test and evaluation through design, operation and live fire to predict, identify and define the limits of effective operability. As important however is the test and evaluation feedback from design through operation which enables greater capability, reliability and survivability. Unfortunately, it is not cost feasible to test ship systems under such extreme conditions as a weapon strike or a multi-compartment fire. Even simple tests such as the effect of loss of cooling is often schedule prohibitive. The performance of a ship under these conditions is therefore dependent on advanced simulation testing of integrated mission and associated support systems to provide a quantitative measure of the quality of the engineering in the design or ship operation – simply: a feedback. Advanced simulation analyses enable existing, ongoing and future combatant designs the ability of the crew to interact with the systems to provide the most effective and time efficient actions regarding isolation and/or restoration from a damaging event. As modern naval mission systems depend upon the integrated function of support systems, the integration of such complex systems on future warships requires an advanced multi-disciplinary approach to design and design testing in order to achieve the expected functionality objectives as well as enable future flexibility planning. Within this paper, the authors describe the application of integrated recoverability models for enhanced test and evaluation and demonstrate the effectiveness of feedback as applied through the design and operation of an exemplar future frigate.