Major shipbuilding countries in the world have started the development of smart ships since the 21st century. Recently, efforts have been made to accelerate the strategic layout in the field of the smart ships. As an important industry competitive highland, the proper approach for the development of the smart ships that is suitable for the domestic shipbuilding industry can be formulated only by deeply understanding its connotation, fully recognizing its professionalism, complexity and difficulty, and clearly clarifying its development direction. The connotation of the smart ships is clarified, and the differences and difficulties of the shipbuilding industry compared with other industries are analyzed in detail. After the discussion of the necessity of the classification of the smart ships, it proposes a method and procedure for the definition of the classification of the smart ships based on the system engineering, explained further by taking the White Paper on the Development of Smart Ships as an example.

For the working ships without power, the mooring system not only meets the requirements of the positioning of a ship, but also enables the ship to move. The moving and rotating operations of a cutter suction dredger are analyzed in the time-domain based on the three-dimensional potential theory. An appropriate mooring system is then designed to ensure the economy of the ship operation. It provides reference for the design of the enginearing ship operation system.

The design of sacrificial anode cathodic protection lacks optimization approaches for the dimensions of single anode and the overall scheme. The concepts of slenderness and flatness are firstly introduced to solve this problem. The relationship between the dimensions of the sacrificial anode without coating and the total quantity and the mass of the required sacrificial anode is deduced based on the specifications. The feasible region of the dimensions of the sacrificial anode is then determined according to the polarization requirement of the structure and the consumption requirement of the sacrificial anode material. Finally, an integrated optimization model is established with the economic index in order to give the solution. This optimal design method can determine the dimensions of the sacrificial anode and get the general scheme with the optimized economy.