A new method for oil tanker structure condition monitoring

Abstract

Recent reports on oil tanker casualties have astonished the world due to big economic losses and severe environmental pollution at sea. This paper firstly makes a review of oil tanker casualties in the recent decades and proposes a suitable condition monitoring system. Defects of the reported oil tanker structure are analyzed regarding ship size and failure type. Different non-destructive testing (NDT) methods for structural health monitoring are introduced including Acoustic Emission (AE), Ultrasonic Scanning (US), Magnetic Particle (MP), Vibration Analysis (VA) and strain measurement. The availability of these techniques in the application of structural condition monitoring for large oil tanker is discussed. On the basis of analysis on dynamic loads upon tanker structure, together with evaluation of present ship structure condition monitoring systems under application, a new structural condition monitoring method is proposed. Scheme of this system, position of sensors, data acquisition and signal analysis method are discussed in this paper.