Abstract
Hull cleaning before repainting is a key operation in the maintenance of ships. For years, a method to improve such operation has been sought by means of the robotization of techniques such as grit blasting and ultra high pressure water jetting. Despite this, it continues to be standard practice in shipyards that this process is carried out manually because the developed robotized systems are too expensive to be widely accepted by shipyards. We have chosen to apply a more conservative and realistic approach to this problem, which has resulted in the development of several solutions that have been designed with different automation and operation range degrees. These solutions are fitted with most of the elements already available in many shipyards, so the installation of additional machinery in the workplace would not be necessary. This paper describes the evolutionary development of sensor systems for the automation of the preparation process of ship hull surfaces before the painting process is performed. Such evolution has given rise to the development of new technologies for coating removal.
Highlights
The ship repair industry in shipyards facilities in Cartagena and Ferrol (Spain) represents a turnover of around EUR 500 million a year and employs22,000 people
The largest turnover generated in the Ship Repair Industry comes from the periodical maintenance operations that are usually performed on ships to guarantee their safe and efficient sailing conditions
The maintenance works are usually programmed so they coincide with the ship hull cleaning and repainting operations, which are performed every 4 or 5 years and provide a substantial work load to the Spanish ship-repair yards
Summary
The robotized systems based on this technology are too expensive to be widely accepted by shipyards These cleaning and repairing works performed on the surface of the ship’s hull have certain issues though:. The Hydro-Crawler system developed by Dans Vandteknik [8], the HydroCat system of Flow International Corporation [9], and Octopus system of Cybernetix [10] are worth mentioning These systems entail three major disadvantages: (1) the lack of competitiveness because of the high costs involved; (2) their dependence on high pressure water (these systems do not accept grit blasting); and (3) their exclusion of the spotting method among their cleaning techniques.
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