Cylinder shell stiffened by rings is used commonly in submersibles, and structure strength should be verified in the initial design stage considering the thickness of the shell, the number of rings, the shape of ring section and so on. Based on the statistical techniques, a strategy for optimization design of pressure hull is proposed in this paper. Its central idea is that: firstly the design variables are chosen by referring criterion for structure strength, then the samples for analysis are created in the design space; secondly finite element models corresponding to the samples are built and analyzed; thirdly the approximations of these analysis are constructed using these samples and responses obtained by finite element model; finally optimization design result is obtained using response surface model. The result shows that this method that can improve the efficiency and achieve optimal intention has valuable reference information for engineering application.
