Thoughts On Naval Architecture & Prominent Names In Vessel Design

Since the advent of ships, naval architecture has evolved and become complex over time. From the primitive era, before aviation and mechanical vehicular traffic, we had wooden-hull ships driven by sails or hand oars. Now, we have advanced vessels relying on diesel-electric or nuclear propulsion, and sometimes autonomically controlled, thanks to the age of cutting-edge computation and digital technologies. 

In a basic sense, the areas of naval architecture chiefly deal with 5 indispensable aspects of floating vessels:

i) It should float, ii) It should be stable under given conditions, iii) It should move with the desired speed without any hindrance, iv) It should be strong and intact enough, v) It should be controlled as per our accord and be headed towards any direction.

Magnifying all these foundations, in a technical sense, naval architecture deals with the design and construction of floating vessels (and also submerged ones) and takes into account a wide variety of aspects, including basic design, structural design, detailed design, stability and seakeeping, hydrostatics and hydrodynamics, resistance and propulsion, manoeuvring and control, and several tenets of mechanical, electrical, material science, electronics, IT, and telecommunication engineering. Moreover, naval architecture is a perpetually burgeoning field. 

From those wood hull eras, when the gamut of this field encompassed basic aspects like design, drafting, construction, and materials, today’s naval architecture also includes intricate ambits like AI, ML, Data Analytics, and other advanced levels of Information and Communication technology.

While ship design is often interchangeably used with naval architecture, it is much more. Naval Architecture includes everything ranging from the starting point of the time when the concept design is conceived as per the demand to the final stage after complete construction when a vessel is ready to enter into service.

Naval architecture is closely related to other fields, such as ocean engineering and sciences. However, while naval architecture deals with vessels like ships and submarines, ocean engineering and related subjects delve into the science and technology encompassing the seas and oceans. 

The science branch of this interdisciplinary area is mainly the subject of oceanography, and it essentially involves understanding the physics, chemistry, geography, geophysics, topology, hydrodynamics, hydrology, and all related aspects of the nature of the large bodies of water. The technology branch involves aspects like coastal engineering, offshore engineering, and civil engineering works related to deep water, like sea bridges, artificial islands, ports, other structures, and other subsea constructions.

Moreover, the versatility of naval architecture also couples it with another similar field: Marine Engineering. However, while a naval architect deals with the overall aspects of a floating vessel or structure, with a major focus on design and construction, a marine engineer is solely interested in the propulsion, engines, and machinery of a vessel. However, for all practical purposes, these two streams are interdisciplinary as well, and hence, a naval architect has a minimum required amount of basic knowledge about marine engineering and vice-versa. It is just that their areas of application are different.

Now, naval architecture, as an academic subject, can be standalone (though rarely), but for all practical purposes, it is coupled with a related subject like ocean engineering and sciences, marine engineering, offshore engineering, etc. When naval architecture, as a curriculum, is combined with marine engineering, the person in question mostly deals with vessels. 

However, when naval architecture is combined with subjects like ocean engineering, oceanography, or offshore engineering, the scope of interest dramatically increases. Then, the person in question needs to have a substantial amount of knowledge in both the study of vessels and multifarious ambits related to the oceans, ranging from oceanographic research to underwater explorations, coastal structures to offshore engineering, the study of wave patterns to designing a subsea pipeline, and so on.

Furthermore, in this era of computational advancements and IT-driven capabilities, a naval architect or ocean engineer today also needs to have a very good grasp of digital sleights ranging from CAD/CAM to data sciences, engineering applications analysis software (FEA, CFD, etc.), dedicated tools for oceanic research and meteorology, and so on.

Thus, it can be rightly said that a naval architect of today is not the traditional ship designer, and all such intertwined avenues pave a wide range of ramifications in both roles and opportunities in a person’s career.  

Role of Naval-Architecture Based Service Providers

Speaking of naval architecture in the context of the industry, focusing our lens on the aspect of vessels, any organisation, firm, service provider, or company can essentially provide either any or a combination of the following verticals:

• Design of vessels like ships, submarines, submersibles, floating platforms, and so on. This mostly involves the scope of every design stage, from concept to detail, and encompasses all related technical gamuts involving stability work, structural strength, hydrodynamics and hydrostatics, resistance and propulsion, etc. Recall the 5 indispensables of a vessel mentioned at the start.
• Collaborating with shipyards to verify completed designs (many have a dedicated design office).
• Assessment of new buildings or existing vessels from clientele, including shipyards and builders, operators and owners, defence, and so on.
• Guidance and advisories for new or existing vessels from third-party designs.
• Analysis part-works for different vessels (as mentioned above) occasionally.
• Addressing design and operation issues for a vessel and resolving them.
• Part design of any feature of a vessel or structure (anything ranging from a rudder to deck cranage, helideck to accommodation space for the crew, just to name a few). The main design works, in this case, are taken care of by some other entity.
• Design guidance for refitting and retrofitting of existing vessels.
• Capability developments in tools, software, technologies, design innovations, etc.
• All the aforementioned areas extended to other areas in offshore structures, coastal structures, undersea installations, etc. (if the body in question offers services in these).
• Now, many large organizations provide these services as part of their business verticals; that is, they also deal with other areas.

 Some Big Names in the Industry

Some renowned and reputed bodies related to the area of naval architecture include:

• Atkins: A Canadian-British multinational engineering organisation. It is a part of its parent body, SNC-Lavalin, headquartered in London. It is touted as the world’s 11th largest design capability provider and has an annual revenue figure of over 2 billion GBP. Its global presence spans across nearly 30 nations. Its wide range of services includes sectors of naval architecture, offshore, aerospace, railways, civil, power and energy, and so on. Amongst slews of achievements, designing the erstwhile largest passenger cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas, is one of its biggest milestones
• McDermott is another leading service provider and engineering consulting organization in the world. More than a century old, this reputed global industry leader spans more than 50 countries and ventures in areas ranging from marine to civil construction. Furthermore, the company also owns a number of commercial vessels for operation. It is headquartered in Houston, Texas, United States.
• Gibbs and Cox: Though it started as a farm about 100 years ago, this company is today a leading service provider for ship design, including state-of-the-art indigenous warships. As of 2021, it is acquired by reputed American industry leader, Leidos. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States.
• Naval Group: A pioneer in defence ship design, this French industry giant is one of the oldest concerns in the world, having a rich history of almost 400 years! Headquartered in Paris, Naval Group has been a critically acclaimed name in designing and developing defence assets like ships, submarines, and cutting-edge systems in weaponisation. Though the main service provider for France, it collaborates with several nations worldwide. For instance, the Indian Navy has acquired several Scorpene-class war submarines, a top-notch state-of-the-art conception of Naval, with the entire project of fleet construction being carried out at Mazagaon Docks, Mumbai, in collaboration with them.
• Fincantieri: This renowned Italian shipbuilder is the largest in Europe and the 4th largest in the world. It has been a trailblazer in producing some of the best vessel designs. Though our list only deals from a design point of view, shipbuilders and yards, not under the purview, Fincantieri stands out as a pioneer naval architecture service provider as it has not only conceived some of the best indigenous designs to date but is now the parent company of Vard Group, formerly a leading naval architecture company.
• Thyssenkrupp is a reputed German multinational corporation that specializes mainly in marine systems but is also a top name in vessel design.
• Vera Navis: A Portuguese company that has, over recent times, gained steam to become one of the leading vessel design and project management service providers in the world.
• Gilbert Associates Inc.- Based in Massachusetts, this US-based firm mainly designs small and medium-sized vessels.
• TAI Engineers LLC. : Another leading American concern is providing vessel design, construction, and guidance solutions.
• Larsen & Toubro: This leading Indian multinational is a huge name in the field. Shipbuilding and design are among the top verticals of this salt-to-software giant, which handles multifarious sectors. Though identified mostly as a shipyard, L&T has forayed into the establishment of dedicated centres that solely deal with providing design services for multitudes of vessels, including submarines.

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