在初步設計階段能準確的預估船舶鋼料重量，使船廠可以掌握船舶的建造成本，進而提高與船東簽訂合約的機會。從鋼料重量的預估方法中，運用分段特徵法將船舶進行分段，可以準確的預估船舶重量，但此方法在船艏、船艉和住艙等形狀變化大的船段，重量預估的誤差結果是較大的。因此本研究運用分段特徵法加入船段形狀特徵來解決此問題。
從文獻發現，在初步設計階段進行主要尺寸與船段形狀的整合，可以提升初步船舶設計的有效性。藉由此概念，分段特徵法的分析參數除了使用船舶的全長、寬、深和船段長度，另增加了船段形狀。船段形狀取自船段佈置圖的縱剖面面積，作為船段形狀的特徵參數，以提升形狀變化大的船段的預估準確性。
由船段形狀特徵的重量預估結果顯示，在船艏段、船艉段和住艙的預估誤差是3%、5%、5%，而原分段特徵法的預估誤差是7%、10%、6%，表示利用船段形狀特徵可以改善重量預估結果。最後，本研究提出快速建立概略佈置圖的方法，藉由鋼料重量預估結果回饋到船段形狀資料庫，擷取出與預估結果相似的船段形狀特徵。由此便可以快速的建立船東需求的船殼外型，讓船廠與船東在初步設計階段，對於船型的選擇與形狀的構型能有新的參考基準。

Accurate estimation of the weight of a ship’s steel material at the initial design stage can enable the shipyard to approximate the ship’s construction cost, thereby improving its likelihood of signing a contract with the ship owner. The feature-based segment estimation (FSE) method, which is a method of estimating steel weight, can accurately estimate a ship’s weight by dividing it into various segments. However, the FSE method yields relatively large errors when used to estimate the weight of a ship with a forepeak, an aft peak and a deckhouse that vary considerably in size between their respective various sections. Therefore, to solve this problem, this study employs the FSE method in combination with the hull form feature.
Previous studies have demonstrated that integration of the principal dimensions and the hull form at the initial design stage can improve the effectiveness of the preliminary ship design. Accordingly, in addition to the ship’s total length, width and depth and hull length, the hull form is included in the analysis parameters involved in the FSE method. The hull form is obtained from the longitudinal sectional area of the block arrangement and used as the characteristic parameter of the hull form to improve accuracy in estimating a hull that varies considerably in size between different sections.
The hull form feature-based weight estimation results show that the FSE method combined with the hull form feature yields an estimation error of 3%, 5% and 5% for the forepeak, aft peak and deckhouse, respectively, compared to the estimation error of the original FSE method of 7%, 10% and 6%, respectively. This suggests that the use of the hull form feature can improve weight estimation. Finally, this study proposes a quick method for producing a rough general arrangement. A hull form feature similar to the estimation results can be extracted by putting the steel material weight estimation results into the hull form database. In this manner, the hull form required by the ship owner can be established in a timely fashion, providing the shipyard and the ship owner with a new reference for selecting the ship type and configuring the hull form at the initial design stage.

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