Structural Integrity Assessment and Analysis Tools for Structural Health Monitoring

The Navy has a critical need for the ability to predict, monitor, and assess the structural health of their high performance ships. While methods currently exist that attempt to fulfill this need, they are undesirably labor-intensive and time consuming and do not have the ability to process operational variables such as load, material condition, sea-state, weather, etc. A software toolset that can collect, analyze, and display data from a variety of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) sensors in a way that aides decision makers in determining operational and maintenance planning would be invaluable to the Navy. To provide this capability, in Phase I, McQ initiated the research and development of the Integrated Naval Ship Condition Assessment Toolset (INSCAT). As the name implies, the INSCAT is comprised of several software subsystems integrated into a single toolset for monitoring the structural health of naval ships. The INSCAT includes a multi-tiered CAD based GUI to display pertinent SHM data, AI (SOM) based SHM algorithms for real time situational awareness and long term SHM oversight, and a flexible data interface to facilitate integration with current Navy systems such as the integrated condition assessment system (ICAS).