Applying closed-loop product lifecycle management to enable fact based design of boats

In the design of both leisure as well as professional boats, the experience of the boat designers and builders traditionally play a central role. To reach the desired customer satisfaction especially with high powered vessels, which often are used for decades, the tendency of overengineering is imminent. This is mainly based on the lack of reliable testing data and the high costs of towing tank tests and complex hydro dynamic simulations. The paradigm of Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) can be employed as the enabling technology to overcome this lack of objectiveness by supplying the necessary product usage information to improve these processes. This paper presents an explorative approach towards a fact-based design and development process utilising distributed sensor data acquisition and high performance computing to enhance and validate the hydrodynamic simulations during the development process with the objective to reduce costs and uncertainties while increasing development speed and customer satisfaction. Beyond the related work and detailed description of the solution approach, this paper explores a concrete application experiment and gives conclusions on the applicability of Closed-Loop PLM as well as the other employed technologies.