Machinery Health Monitoring for Shipyard Productivity

The team of RLW Inc., Applied Research Lab of Penn State University, and NASSCO (National Steel and Shipbuilding Company) will build and demonstrate a wireless machinery health monitoring system for large rail-mounted shipyard cranes. The demonstrationwill be designed to show that affordable machinery health monitoring technology can reduce shipbuilding costs by improving the reliability of shipyard cranes while reducing the cost of their maintenance. The system will include algorithms; transducers;and multi-channel, wireless, health monitoring devices as well as the local area network and hand-held devices needed for a complete, functioning system. The system will conform to the Open System Architecture (OSA) protocols. Monitored components willinclude wheel bearings and motors, a hoist motor, and a diesel generator. The proposed Phase I option will transition the lessons learned to a T-AKE ship crane demo of shipboard machinery health monitoring. The shipyards that build the Navy's ships aswell as the Navy-owned yards that repair them can improve the reliability for their production equipment while reducing the cost of maintenance by increasing the use of machinery health monitoring systems. The large shipyard cranes selected for thisproject offer an excellent target for these technologies due to the very high cost and ripple-effect of a crane component failure. Because of the crane's mobility, the wireless approach is particularly applicable. The technology to be developed anddemonstrated will transition readily to shipboard applications including the cranes on the new T-AKE ships. Many paths for commercialization are available for project results: 1) The private yards such as NASSCO; 2) Navy shipyards; 3) Navy ships,including T-AKE ships, other new ships, and the entire legacy fleet; 4) Private ships and oil rigs.