Corvette Visby Class

The Visby Class Corvette. The Visby Class Corvette is the new surface vessel of the Swedish Naval Forces produced at the Karlskrona Shipyard. The hull of the corvette is an all carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CRP) sandwich construction with advanced stealth properties.

The vessels total length is 72 meters, the beam is 10.40 meters, and the displacement is 600 metric tonnes fully equiped. This makes the Visby Class corvette the world's largest CRP construction.

ALFGAM Optimering participated in the structural design and analysis of the hull by using our unique knowledge in optimisation. The decision to use carbon fibers in place of E-glass in the hull was strongly influenced by the results of our structural optimisation.

More then thirty different load cases were used during the optimisation together with 116 variables and 701 constriants. The load cases included hollow, crest, impact, global and local slamming. Variables used in the optimisation controlled fiber type, lay-up thickness, stacking sequence, core thickness and core material.

The optimisation where performed with respect to production cost, weight and performance of the vessel.

Conclusion:

By using structural optimisation early in the design process completely new concepts can be developed and evaluated. ROpt made it possible to find an optimal solution to a problem with extreme numbers of variables and constraints.