Executive Summary : | There are a number of Commercial and Naval ships that have been in service for over 25 years (approx.), which are prone to metallurgical anomalies, stresses and deformations. Unfortunately, these metallurgical details are not scanned in time over the service life of ships. Therefore, IN (or even other shipping industries) facing a major problem while estimating the ship’s condition. In turn, it is difficult to predict whether the vessel completed its CODAL LIFE or not. Often, Marine Engineers find themselves in dilemma to make appropriate decisions about such ships. i.e. whether to decommission or continue them in service. Moreover, there is an ambiguity regarding ships’ condition, particularly, whether a given (or selected) vessel can be operated in higher sea states or not. The main problem comes from fatigue consideration, whether residual life of the ship is available or not. To solve this problem, it is essential to perform structural health monitoring continuously to predict the residual life of these ships. Besides that, it is difficult to predict whether the structural members degraded due to corrosion and paint film degradation. Therefore, it is difficult to make decisions on where and when required maintenance activities. This groundbreaking technology provides both commercial Vessel Operators and the Navy to know their ships (any class) and its structural component health in advance more in a predictive mode so that they can decide on time the vessel maintenance need and its lifespan, which is helpful for faster and accurate decision making. This will also open more opportunity windows for the Shipping Companies and the Navy to manage its fleets efficiently at reduced cost and give awareness on fleet readiness. This system monitors real-time vessels’ global and local structural stress, loads, temperature variations, vibrations, etc. Then, it assesses the vessel’s global and local structural behavior. Further, it offers evidence-based decision support (in terms of the vessel’s risk level while operating in different operating sea states) to the key personnel (and stakeholders) onboard and onshore. As a result, the decision-making process is easy in critical conditions. The proposed mechanism will also be equally applicable in the structural health monitoring of aircraft, railways and automobiles. The proposed work plans are as follows: Estimating plate thickness, corrosion rate and pain degradation, Estimating the loads (external and internal loads) on the structure, Predicting the structural damage caused by these loads, Predicting the damage growth during the operation, Estimating the future performance of the structure by considering the condition of the existing structural component. The combination of expertise of several academic experts in this consortium including electronics, metallurgy, civil and mechanical along with the industry would enable the proposed concepts to be translated into a product. |
