A new method to design section area curve of ship based on niche ACO

The amend chord length parameterization was used to dispose different feasible point vectors of section area. The function of cubic parametric spline curve was used to depict the subsections of the section area curve. The work of designing a good section area curve was transformed to the work of selecting the best point vector under given constraints, in which the objects were minimum deform energy, the best length of parallel middle body, the best position of parallel middle body, the best longitudinal prismatic coefficient C_p of the ship, and the best vertical position of buoyancy center. Ant colony optimization was applied to design and optimize the objective curve, and the niche mechanism was used to enhance the ability of parametric points to rectify in narrow scope. According to the principal dimensions of a certain ship, a new section area curve was designed based on the proposed method in this paper, and it was compared to the original one. The final result showed that the new method proposed in this paper was feasible to design new section area curve of ship without any mother curve.