Investigation into maritime military platform hull defects automation of sensors and processing: Research-in-progress

Management of maritime military platform life is a real challenge for operators and maintainers. One of the major problems is how to capture cost effective information about the hull defect and predict the remaining life? This paper will focus on the automation process for calculation of the failure rate and prediction from collated hull defects information. This data is assessed for accuracy, sensitivity and correctness of defect location and failure modes. An outline of the automation techniques investigated to determine the hull failures rates is discussed. Five major failure modes are analysed and a high level approach for integrating failure data collation is presented. The paper then discusses some of the issues and challenges with obtaining reliable maintenance data and opportunities for further research in finding a better solution.