Ship hull structure monitoring using fibre optic sensors

We discuss the need for ship hull monitoring and the roles such a system may fill during the different stages of a ship's lifetime. We have found that fibre optic sensors are well suited for this application and present the fibre Bragg grating technology that has been employed in the composite hull embedded sensor system project (CHESS). Signal processing is the key to real-time structure monitoring, and we comment on the modular signal processing system that is being developed at FFI. Finally we present the CHESS installation on a new Norwegian naval vessel and show some results obtained with this system in systematic sea-keeping tests. The CHESS measurements on the new Norwegian fast patrol boat have been instrumental in the design verification of the vessel.