Life on the ocean wave

Dr Thomas Bligh is one of those fortunate people who manages to combine work with the things they are most passionate about in life. With a name like Bligh, it is perhaps no wonder that his passions are involved with the sea and sailing (he is in fact a direct descendant of that famous Captain Bligh of the mutiny on the Bounty). For the last fifteen years, he and members of his research team in the Manufacturing Engineering Division have worked on software packages for ship design. "The design of ships has always been an iterative process," he explains. "Using conventional techniques it takes typically around ten years to design a warship, for instance. Working with KT Tan, we are aiming to cut the time it takes by half, simply by making some of the design decisions concurrent instead of sequential. This not only allows the process to be speeded up, but also allows the designer to run many more options, and thus give the customer more choice."