Smart ships

An oil tanker has been equipped with a structural monitoring system consisting of  fibre optic sensors.

Smartec, a wholly owned subsidiary of Roctest, provided the structural monitoring system in conjunction with the Italian company Pegaso Systems for the tanker ship "Four Island".

The system has been installed during recent refurbishment works of the ship in the Vinashin shipyard in Vietnam.

The "Four Island" ship is an oil tanker which is now equipped with a ship hull structural monitoring system consisting of 48 fibre optic SMARTprofile MuST sensors expressly developed by Smartec and Pegaso Systems.

In fact, the companies claim that this is the first fibre optic monitoring system in the world to be totally designed and integrated in a ship of this size.

'Over the years, Smartec has instrumented many civil and industrial structures, but this is the first time that we have provided a monitoring system expressly developed and dedicated to a naval application," said Nicoletta Casanova, CEO of Smartec.

'Our system will provide a real-time diagnosis of the ship's structural behaviour, with particular reference to critical points and sections of the ship frame. We expect this technology to be used on many other ageing and new ships around the world,' she added.

Smartec has signed an agreement with Pegaso Systems for the worldwide commercialisation of the ship hull structural monitoring solution. Pegaso Systems is an Italian system integrator specialising in continuous health monitoring systems for naval and civil applications.