Towards design of prognostics and health management solutions for maritime assets

With increase in competition between OEMs of maritime assets and operators alike, the need to maximize the productivity of an equipment and increase operational efficiency and reliability is increasingly stringent and challenging. Also, with the adoption of availability contracts, maritime OEMs are becoming directly interested in understanding the health of their assets in order to maximize profits and to minimize the risk of a system's failure. The key to address these challenges and needs is performance optimization. For this to be possible it is important to understand that system failure can induce downtime which will increase the total cost of ownership, therefore it is important by all means to minimize unscheduled maintenance. If the state of health or condition of a system, subsystem or component is known, condition-based maintenance can be carried out and system design optimization can be achieved thereby reducing total cost of ownership. With the increasing competition with regards to the maritime industry, it is important that the state of health of a component/sub-system/system/asset is known before a vessel embarks on a mission. Any breakdown or malfunction in any part of any system or subsystem on board vessel during the operation offshore will lead to large economic losses and sometimes cause accidents. For example, damages to the fuel oil system of vessel's main engine can result in huge downtime as a result of the vessel not being in operation. This paper presents a prognostic and health management (PHM) development process applied on a fuel oil system powering diesel engines typically used in various cruise and fishing vessels, dredgers, pipe laying vessels and large oil tankers. This process will hopefully enable future PHM solutions for maritime assets to be designed in a more formal and systematic way

Waveform-level time-domain simulation comparison study of three shipboard power system architectures

Detailed waveform-level modeling and simulation of three alternative shipboard power system architectures is presented herein. The three system architectures are based on conventional 60Hz medium-voltage ac (MVAC), higherfrequency 240Hz medium-voltage ac (HFAC) and mediumvoltage dc (MVDC) technologies. To support the quantitative assessment and comparison of these three different power system architectures, each technology was modeled using a common representative, notional baseline ship. The baseline ship represents a multi-mission destroyer fitted with an 80MW next generation integrated power system (NGIPS). Modeling of each power system architecture is set forth along with simulation studies for three fault scenarios. Each of the three power system architectures was implemented within the MATLAB/ Simulink environment. Continuity of service was evaluated for each architecture along with a fault scenario using an operability metric. After a brief description of the three power system architectures and the operability metric, quantitative results are presented.Center for Electromechanic

Post-Westgate SWAT : C4ISTAR Architectural Framework for Autonomous Network Integrated Multifaceted Warfighting Solutions Version 1.0 : A Peer-Reviewed Monograph

Police SWAT teams and Military Special Forces face mounting pressure and challenges from adversaries that can only be resolved by way of ever more sophisticated inputs into tactical operations. Lethal Autonomy provides constrained military/security forces with a viable option, but only if implementation has got proper empirically supported foundations. Autonomous weapon systems can be designed and developed to conduct ground, air and naval operations. This monograph offers some insights into the challenges of developing legal, reliable and ethical forms of autonomous weapons, that address the gap between Police or Law Enforcement and Military operations that is growing exponentially small. National adversaries are today in many instances hybrid threats, that manifest criminal and military traits, these often require deployment of hybrid-capability autonomous weapons imbued with the capability to taken on both Military and/or Security objectives. The Westgate Terrorist Attack of 21st September 2013 in the Westlands suburb of Nairobi, Kenya is a very clear manifestation of the hybrid combat scenario that required military response and police investigations against a fighting cell of the Somalia based globally networked Al Shabaab terrorist group.Comment: 52 pages, 6 Figures, over 40 references, reviewed by a reade

Arctic Standards: Recommendations on Oil Spill Prevention, Response, and Safety in the U.S. Arctic Ocean

Oil spilled in Arctic waters would be particularly difficult to remove. Current technology has not been proved to effectively clean up oil when mixed with ice or when trapped under ice. An oil spill would have a profoundly adverse impact on the rich and complex ecosystem found nowhere else in the United States. The Arctic Ocean is home to bowhead, beluga, and gray whales; walruses; polar bears; and other magnificent marine mammals, as well as millions of migratory birds. A healthy ocean is important for these species and integral to the continuation of hunting and fishing traditions practiced by Alaska Native communities for thousands of years.To aid the United States in its efforts to modernize Arctic technology and equipment standards, this report examines the fierce Arctic conditions in which offshore oil and gas operations could take place and then offers a summary of key recommendations for the Interior Department to consider as it develops world-class, Arctic-specific regulatory standards for these activities. Pew's recommendations call for improved technology,equipment, and procedural requirements that match the challenging conditions in the Arctic and for full public participation and transparency throughout the decision-making process. Pew is not opposed to offshore drilling, but a balance must be achieved between responsible energy development and protection of the environment.It is essential that appropriate standards be in place for safety and for oil spill prevention and response in this extreme, remote, and vulnerable ecosystem. This report recommends updating regulations to include Arctic specific requirements and codifying temporary guidance into regulation. The appendixes to this report provide substantially more detail on the report's recommendations, including technical background documentation and additional referenced materials. Please refer to the full set of appendixes for a complete set of recommendations. This report and its appendixes offer guidelines for responsible hydrocarbon development in the U.S. Arctic Ocean

Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Communication Networks for the Maritime Internet of Things: Key Technologies, Opportunities, and Challenges

With the rapid development of marine activities, there has been an increasing number of maritime mobile terminals, as well as a growing demand for high-speed and ultra-reliable maritime communications to keep them connected. Traditionally, the maritime Internet of Things (IoT) is enabled by maritime satellites. However, satellites are seriously restricted by their high latency and relatively low data rate. As an alternative, shore & island-based base stations (BSs) can be built to extend the coverage of terrestrial networks using fourth-generation (4G), fifth-generation (5G), and beyond 5G services. Unmanned aerial vehicles can also be exploited to serve as aerial maritime BSs. Despite of all these approaches, there are still open issues for an efficient maritime communication network (MCN). For example, due to the complicated electromagnetic propagation environment, the limited geometrically available BS sites, and rigorous service demands from mission-critical applications, conventional communication and networking theories and methods should be tailored for maritime scenarios. Towards this end, we provide a survey on the demand for maritime communications, the state-of-the-art MCNs, and key technologies for enhancing transmission efficiency, extending network coverage, and provisioning maritime-specific services. Future challenges in developing an environment-aware, service-driven, and integrated satellite-air-ground MCN to be smart enough to utilize external auxiliary information, e.g., sea state and atmosphere conditions, are also discussed

Generalized Method Of Designing Unmanned Remotely Operated Complexes Based On The System Approach

Self-propelled underwater systems belong to the effective means of marine robotics. The advantages of their use include the ability to perform underwater work in real time with high quality and without risk to the life of a human operator. At present, the design of such complexes is not formalized and is carried out separately for each of the components – a remotely operated vehicle, a tether-cable and cable winch, a cargo device and a control and energy device. As a result, the time spent on design increases and its quality decreases. The system approach to the design of remotely operated complexes ensures that the features of the interaction of the components of the complex are taken into account when performing its main operating modes. In this paper, the system interaction between the components of the complex is proposed to take into account in the form of decomposition of “underwater tasks (mission) – underwater technology of its implementation – underwater work on the selected technology – task for the executive mechanism of the complex” operations. With this approach, an information base is formed for the formation of a list of mechanisms of the complex, the technical appearance of its components is being formed, which is important for the early design stages. Operative, creative and engineering phases of the design of the complex are proposed. For each phase, a set of works has been formulated that cover all the components of the complex and use the author's existence equations for these components as a tool for system analysis of technical solutions.The perspective of the scientific task of the creative phase to create accurate information models of the functioning of the components of the complex and models to support the adoption of design decisions based on a systematic approach is shown.The obtained results form the theoretical basis for finding effective technical solutions in the early stages of designing remotely operated complexes and for automating the design with the assistance of modern applied computer research and design packages

World weather program

A brief description of the Global Weather Experiment is presented. The world weather watch program plan is described and includes a global observing system, a global data processing system, a global telecommunication system, and a voluntary cooperation program. A summary of Federal Agency plans and programs to meet the challenges of international meteorology for the two year period, FY 1980-1981, is presented