Prognostics and health management (PHM) is an essential means to optimize resource allocation and improve the intelligent operation and maintenance (O&M) efficiency of marine systems and equipment (MSAE). PHM generally consists of four technical processes, namely health condition motoring (HCM), fault diagnosis (FD), health prognosis (HP), and maintenance decision (MD). In recent years, a large amount of research has been implemented in each process. However, there is not any systematic review that covers the technical framework comprehensively. This article presents a review of the framework of PHM in the marine field to fill the gap. First, the essential HCM methods, which are widely observed in the academic literature, are introduced systematically. Then, the commonly used FD approaches and their applications in MSAE are summarized, and the implementation process of intelligent methods is systematically introduced. After that, the technologies of HP have been reviewed, including the construction of health indicator (HI), health stage (HS) division, and popular remaining useful life (RUL) prediction approaches. Afterwards, the evolution of maintenance strategy in the maritime field is reviewed. Finally, the challenges of implementing PHM for intelligent ships are put forward.
With the development of intelligent ship, types of advanced sensors are in great demand for monitoring the work conditions of ship machinery. In the present work, a self-powered and highly accurate vibration sensor based on bouncing-ball triboelectric nanogenerator (BB-TENG) is proposed and investigated. The BB-TENG sensor consists of two copper electrode layers and one 3D-printed frame filled with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) balls. When the sensor is installed on a vibration exciter, the PTFE balls will continuously bounce between the two electrodes, generating a periodically fluctuating electrical signals whose frequency can be easily measured through fast Fourier transform. Experiments have demonstrated that the BB-TENG sensor has a high signal-to-noise ratio of 34.5 dB with mean error less than 0.05% at the vibration frequency of 10 Hz to 50 Hz which covers the most vibration range of the machinery on ship. In addition, the BB-TENG can power 30 LEDs and a temperature sensor by converting vibration energy into electricity. Therefore, the BB-TENG sensor can be utilized as a self-powered and highly accurate vibration sensor for condition monitoring of intelligent ship machinery.