The cruise ship industry has unique needs and requirements
when it comes to monitoring critical ship-board systems and
equipment. There are basic systems (such as propulsion, steering,
power generation) that MUST be fully operational to even consider
a ship as seaworthy. Beyond that, there are key systems and
equipment that are essential for making the cruise ship habitable
(potable water distribution, HVAC, elevators, etc..).
SWANtech, working in cooperation with our numerous cruise
ship customers, has developed a shipboard monitoring systems
that provides real-time, continuous equipment condition monitoring
of all such critical and essential mechanical systems. Because
our patented stress
wave energy monitoring technology allows
us to identify the ACTUAL condition of
operating equipment,
and to "see" mechanical degradation in its earliest stages,
SWANtech can provide our marine customers with the most advanced
warning of any other technology. Customers have ample time
to schedule routine maintenance, rather than getting a surprise
and loosing a key system at an unsafe or inopportune moment.
Because stress wave measurements are directly effected by
equipment loading and operational conditions, real-time monitoring
of stress wave energy levels (SWE) provides operational staff
and bridge staff with a means of identifying conditions that
/html> create excessive (or minimal) stress wave energy.
It is possible to identify critical operating speeds/RPM at
which propulsion system components (fixed and azimithing "pods")
experience low or excessive stress wave energy and even steering
angles/combinations that should be avoided if possible.
 A ship-wide stress wave monitoring system can begin with the
installation of SWANguard monitoring units in the pod drives,
and Swantech sensors, on the prop and thrust bearings of each
pod. Unlike traditional vibration monitoring systems, there
are no special mounting requirements or a need for multi-axis
orientation of multiple sensors. SWANtech doesn't
measure vibration and make guesses about how this relates to equipment health...we
directly measure friction and wear levels, irrespective of
the normal vibrational frequencies of the particular machinery.
Click on Image for Larger View
The various SWANguard units scattered around
the ship send their real-time data back to
a ship central server where it is stored,
archived, analyzed and made available for
display. SWANguard units can be connected
via private, serial, multi-dropped communication
wiring, or can co-reside on any available
ETHERNET LAN. Wireless spread-spectrum radio
modems can be used to traverse mechanical
slip rings, where units are located in asimuthing
pods. The data from each device/sensor is monitored for absolute
levels, for changes and acceleration, and compared against
statistical data from other, similar machinery. SWANview and
SWANweb display and analysis packages can be used to provide
visualization of the resulting data, with audible and visual
annunciation of problem areas. If ship-board Internet access
is available, the same data can be forwarded to an on-shore
fleet server that acts as a central collection point for all
ships and provides a corporate web-based portal for rapid identification
of fleet/ship/subsystem conditions, alerts and warnings.
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