Smart Machinery Spaces

A distributed shipboard system that wirelessly monitors the health of equipment in machinery spaces and reports to a central location is being developed. The U.S Navy has been mandated with the task of reducing the current manning levels on ships whileenhancing operational efficiency. Currently, a roving watch manually collects health data from up to 30 different machines at 30-minute intervals. This time consuming process is error-prone and requires extensive manpower. Our proposed system automaticallymonitors, processes, and reports the health of machinery spaces, thus reducing manpower requirements significantly. The proposed system is composed of extremely low-power wireless smart sensors with power-harvesting capability and one Single Point DataRetrieval (SPDR) for each machinery space. The wireless sensors will form a reconfigurable ad-hoc network that will wirelessly report to the SPDR. The SPDR will process the data using CBM and RUL software and use wireless or wired means to forward thehealth findings to a central monitoring station that will display the health status of every machinery space. When coupled with similar methods developed by Reduced Ships Crew by Virtual Presence (RSVP), this proposed system has the potential to save theU.S. Navy a $2.5-4 billion in life cycle cost avoidance.