Ship inspection support system using a product model

 Recently, the significance of ship inspections has been increasingly recognized because sea pollution and safety problems are occurring more and more frequently. However, current ship inspections rely on the experience of the workers. Therefore, it is difficult to understand, and hence to improve, the state of ship inspections. In this paper, ship inspection is directed into three stages (plan, do, and check), and the configurations of a total system to support ship inspections are discussed. A prototype system for the “plan” and “do” stages is developed. This is realized by organizing the information that relates to inspection, and defining data models for damage and inspection states. Then the proposed system is integrated with a shipbuilding computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) system so that the ship's structural information can be used effectively. In addition, functions to calculate the damage-finding probability, and functions to generate information about damage and the inspection state are introduced. Therefore, in the planning stage, as inspector can execute a virtual ship inspection, and then the damage-finding probability of each hull part and oversight areas are calculated automatically. Further, by carrying this system into an inspection, an inspector can generate damage information and inspection information simply and easily. Some examples of the proposed system are shown at the end of the paper. Received: November 12, 2001 / Accepted: January 30, 2002     

Depth estimation of surface cracks based on the measurement of crack opening deformation and numerical–experimental iteration

We propose a new method to estimate the depth of a surface crack based on the measurement of crack opening deformation (COD) by using strain gauges. Through finite-element (FE) analysis of several surface cracks with different crack depth, it was found that the distribution of crack depth along the crack line can be approximated by multiplying a certain proportional α to the distribution of COD per unit nominal strain (normalized COD). The strain gauges are cemented just on the crack line and at a reference position, and the normalized CODs are measured under the impact load excited by hammer punching. The surface crack depth is estimated from the normalized COD measurements by a numerical–experimental iteration method based on FE analysis. The estimated distribution of the surface crack depth along the crack line shows good agreement with the shape of a real crack depth.     

Design system for optimum contra-rotating propellers

A new type of contrarotating propeller (CRP) system has been developed through the cooperative research work of five shipbuilding companies in Japan (Hitachi Zosen Corporation; Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.; Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding Co., Ltd.; NKK Corporation; and Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd.). This paper describes a design system for an optimum CRP, which is one of the numerous outcomes of this work. The optimum design system is composed of three theoretical programs: (1) the design program of the optimum CRP; (2) the steady lifting surface program of the CRP; (3) the unsteady lifting surface program of the CRP. These theoretical programs will be discussed in the first part of the paper, and the design system supported by these theoretical programs will then be verified by comparing calculated and experimental results.Translation of an article that appeared in the Journal of The Society of Naval Architects of Japan, vol. 180 (1996): The original article won the SNAJ prize, which is awarded annually to the best papers selected from the SNAJ Journal, JMST, or other quality journals in the field of naval architecture and ocean engineering.     

Study of a simple sensor for stress history measurements of a structural member using a piezoelectric element

This paper describes a stress sensor using a piezoelectric element which was developed to monitor features of the stress history of a structural member. The sensor is 90 mm long, 60 mm wide, and 25 mm thick. A stress-level meter can turn on and off different colored light-emitting diodes (LED) according to the changes in a stress level. A stress-level cross counter can display the number of cycles which exceeds a specified stress level during a monitoring period. The sensor is bonded onto a structural member using an adhesive agent. In order to see the performance of the prototype sensor, experiments were carried out using a fatigue-testing machine. The sensor was bonded onto a smooth specimen and multiple repeated stresses were applied to that specimen. There were three main findings. (1) The sensor can operate under a stress range from −150 MPa to 150 MPa, and a frequency from 0.05 Hz to 5 Hz. (2) The stress-level meter can turn the lights of the LED on and off accurately under any stress amplitude and frequency. (3) When the stress frequency is 1 Hz or less, the stress-level cross counter can count accurately the number of cycles which exceed the predetermined stress levels. Received: February 25, 2000 / Accepted: April 11, 2000     

Robust yaw stability control for electric vehicles based on active front steering control through a steer-by-wire system

A robust yaw stability control design based on active front steering control is proposed for in-wheel-motored electric vehicles with a Steer-by-Wire (SbW) system. The proposed control system consists of an inner-loop controller (referred to in this paper as the steering angle-disturbance observer (SA-DOB), which rejects an input steering disturbance by feeding a compensation steering angle) and an outer-loop tracking controller (i.e., a PI-type tracking controller) to achieve control performance and stability. Because the model uncertainties, which include unmodeled high frequency dynamics and parameter variations, occur in a wide range of driving situations, a robust control design method is applied to the control system to simultaneously guarantee robust stability and robust performance of the control system. The proposed control algorithm was implemented in a CaSim model, which was designed to describe actual in-wheel-motored electric vehicles. The control performances of the proposed yaw stability control system are verified through computer simulations and experimental results using an experimental electric vehicle.