Machinery Health Monitoring for Shipyard Productivity

This proposed Phase II will result in a market-ready, commercially available, machinery health monitoring system for shipyard mobile cranes. The effort will exercise substantial leveraging from completed and ongoing development work funded by SBIR, National Shipbuilding Research Program (NSRP), and Center for Naval Shipbuilding Technology (CNST). This Phase II SBIR has its foundation in the recognition that condition-based maintenance (CBM) and machine health monitoring provide the highest payback when applied to the most critical machinery. When asked what equipment qualifies for CBM, in terms of frequency and seriousness of failure, shipyard managers always point to their mobile cranes. This Phase II will add substantial breadth and depth to the Phase I and to the NSRP/CNST work by adding many components to the list of those monitored and by supporting iterations of algorithm improvement, accomplished as the machinery is operated and history and experience grows. Similarly, the monitoring hardware, software, and communication systems will be improved with increasing experience. The team is comprised of RLW Inc; the Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory (ARL); and two shipyards: NASSCO (General Dynamics), San Diego; and Ingalls (Northrop Grumman Ship Systems), Pascagoula. The experienced teammates have proven their ability to work effectively together on other projects.