Ship machinery and equipment wireless condition monitoring system

Condition based maintenance (CBM) is a maintenance approach that has been proven to provide significant reduction in maintenance cost and associated risk. Several industries such as aerospace and power generation have incorporated CBM and have been driving the developments in progressively better diagnostic and prognostic maintenance management. Other benefits that can be linked with appropriate use of CBM include better management of the operational characteristics of the vessel, reduction of emissions and energy efficiency. However in the maritime industry this is not the case. Less than 2% of the global fleet of vessels is utilising CBM (Shorten, 2012). This can be associated with several factors that inhibit the implementation of CBM in vessels. The most important of those are the cost of installation, the capital investment in training staff and the lack of trust in the prediction capabilities of the technology. This paper presents a novel method based on wireless data transmission which can demonstrate reduced installation costs. Moreover, as part of the INCASS (Inspection Capabilities for Enhanced Ship Safety) EU FP7 project, this paper presents a novel decision support system (DSS) solution that can be used onboard a ship with minimal initial training. The reliable user friendly graphical interface (GUI) developed in Java language provides relevant and on-time information for maintenance decision support. The combination of the developed hardware and software give a complete solution that can be applied to vessels while minimising investment costs and training.