Updated Steel Weight Estimation for Cruise Ship Concept Design

Estimating the steel weight of ships during the early conceptual stages is of the utmost importance since it represents about 50% of the lightship weight of the ship. From a technical standpoint, it significantly affects cargo capacity, design speed, stability, and ship safety, thus requiring an accurate estimation. The steel weight is usually evaluated using simple empirical formulations during the concept design, mainly based on the ship's main particulars. Those formulas are derived by statistical analysis of past projects and can be applied only for the specific ship type (or types) included in the considered database. In the literature, many formulas are present mainly related to cargo ships. Currently, no empirical formulation is available for cruise ships that are applicable in the very early conceptual stages. The present study aims to identify an empirical formulation for estimating the steel weight of a luxury cruise ship based on calibrating a set of existing empirical formulas.