Hull Structure Monitoring Using Inertial Measurement Units

Hull structure monitoring is needed to provide healthy suggestions for a ship. Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are available for this application. By installing IMUs on different points of the ship hull, the angular velocity and acceleration of each point can be measured. Once the hull flexure changes, the movement parameters of those points will be different, and the hull flexure can be estimated through matching these parameters by a Kalman filter. We deduced proper measurement equations of the Kalman filter, which is essential for the flexure estimation, and designed real data and simulation data experiments to verify the equation. Results showed that the hull structure can be effectively monitored by the proposed method.