Marine industry starts using age old manufacturing technology

While condition monitoring systems have been used by the manufacturing industry for quite some time, they are a relatively new concept to the marine sector.

FAG Industrial Services (F’IS) is now supplying their DTECT X1 system to RCM Marine, who are using the vibration-based detection technology on board vessels from ferries to oil tankers. The basic model is available in a 2-channel or 8-channel version with external multiplexer.

All commonly used acceleration, speed and displacement factors can be monitored using DTECT X1. The sensor-measured signal is broken up into its frequency components using Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT), which enables monitoring of amplitudes for previously specified threshold values, triggering an alarm if these are exceeded.

F’IS has worked with RCM to develop the Voyager vibration monitoring system specifically for use by marine customers. Voyager is customised to integrate into a ship’s engineering environment, and has already been awarded the Seatrade Award for New IT Application for the Marine Industry 2007.

“The adoption of predictive maintenance to optimise component life you might think is an old concept,” comments Larry Rumbol, Director of RCM. “On ships it is not. It’s a new concept that people are slowly coming to address.”

A unique feature of Voyager is its real-time alerting function. Through an exclusive agreement with Polestar, alarms are sent as small package data via satellite from the vessel, and are distributed in real-time as the client desires. Data can also be sent to any platform, be that a PC; mobile phone; or Blackberry.

http://www.rcmmarine.com

http://www.schaeffler.com

Comments