Comparison between different survivability measures on a generic frigate

Journal article, 2015

Choosing suitable survivability measures is a demanding task that has to start early in the ship design process. Throughout the design process there is a need for compromises that will define and sometimes limit future operations or capabilities. In this study generic survivability measures are compared. The study also examines the sensitivity of the calculated probabilities to changes in the threat description. The result shows that it is important to investigate the total effect of a hit over a set of relevant ship functions defined for example by survivability levels. The calculations for different threat definitions show that the changes in survivability are substantial when the threat definition is changed. Moreover, the effects of different hit assumptions differ between weapon types. This must be treated as an uncertainty which also should be reflected in the output and weighted into the decisions made, based on the survivability analysis.