A Diagnostic System for Remote Real-Time Monitoring of Marine Diesel-Electric Propulsion Systems

An innovative diesel-electric power supply and propulsion system is a highly integrated electric system consisting of power generation, power distribution, and electrical drives. Every component of this system constantly produces operating data, which is read and evaluated by several programmable logic controllers, which in turn produce control signals. This thesis presents a diagnostic system that collects the operating data and control signals from all power supply, propulsion, and control components on board, saves them to a hard drive, and enables an engineer to view the data remotely over the internet, in real-time as well as in retrospect. An industrial computer, certified for on-board use, is embedded into the ship’s control unit, autonomously running the software that retrieves the data via an industrial Ethernet connection and makes it available to a remote user through a web interface or a database connection