Mon, 07 September, 2020
The Innovate UK-funded Digital Monitoring of Ships (DiMOS) Project has reached another key milestone towards the creation of a digital monitoring system for ships.
The collaborative project, which includes input from Vibtek Ltd, CMServices Global Ltd and Brunel University alongside TWI, is uniting industry and academia to develop a prescriptive maintenance digital platform for condition monitoring and maintenance planning for ship structures, engine machinery and auxiliary systems.
The system will use real-time sensor data and AI-based models to prescribe maintenance while also taking account of risk levels, maintenance schedules and the associated costs.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic created difficulties for data collection, this is now underway with assistance from Condor Ferries on the South Coast of England, Grant’s Distillery in Scotland, the Royal Mail in Sheffield and Toyota in Derby. This data collection is being done both periodically and in real time, using a wide number of assets that are typical in marine, such as pumps, fans, compressors, gearboxes and hydraulic systems. In addition, the project is collating vibration data from sensors and other data collection routes to bring together process, environmental and other key datasets.
This testing has allowed the project to advance the goal of bridging the gap between expert-led condition monitoring systems and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Using real-time sensor data and AI-based models, the project is now on target to create prescriptive maintenance planning platform tools for machinery systems, using machinery reliability templates supported by local failure mode effects and criticality analysis data. This will, in turn, allow for the deliverable of a balanced yet prescriptive advisory output that can be actioned by maintenance crew as part of their normal duties.
The benefits of the project, which include eliminating unnecessary tasks and focusing resources on those that add value and improve the through-life cost of asset ownership while also adding to early warning capabilities of impending machinery failure, could also be rolled out to other industries outside of marine.
The two-year project is on course to complete in December 2020 and we will bring you further updates as we approach this date. In the meantime, you can find out more at the dedicated DiMOS project website.
The DiMOS Project has received funding from Innovate UK with Project Reference No. 104505