Maintenance strategies for machinery systems of autonomous ships

Prognostics and health management systems, and reliability centered maintenance strategies for autonomous marine vessels are evaluated. The application steps of the approaches are presented and the points to be considered in case the methods are applied in autonomous ship machinery systems are stated. As a result of the study, a robust maintenance method with a hybrid structure that might be adapted to autonomous marine vessels is put forward. The methodology targets to improve the effectiveness of maintenance based on a combination of the specified approaches. In this method, the monitoring of system parameters, fault diagnosis, and prognosis are performed on the basis of intelligent algorithms, while the failure modes of the system, their effects, and their consequences are identified within the scope of reliability-centered maintenance analysis. The proposed strategy provides advantages on some issues such as system reliability, sustainability, and maintenance schedule.