Maritime transport has adapted to recent political and economic shifts by addressing stringent pollution reduction requirements, redrawing transport routes for safety, reducing onboard technical incidents, managing data security risks and transitioning to autonomous vessels. This paper presents a novel approach to predictive maintenance in the maritime industry, leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to enhance fault detection and maintenance planning for naval systems. Traditional maintenance strategies, such as corrective and preventive maintenance, are increasingly ineffective in meeting the high safety and efficiency standards required by maritime operations. The proposed model integrates AI-driven methods to process operational data from shipboard systems, enabling more accurate fault diagnosis and early identification of system failures. By analyzing historical operational data, ML algorithms identify patterns and estimate the functional states, helping prevent unplanned failures and costly downtime. This approach is critical in environments where technical failures are a leading cause of incidents, as demonstrated by the high rate of machinery-related accidents in maritime operations. Our study highlights the growing importance of AI and ML in predictive maintenance and offers a practical tool for improving operational safety and efficiency in the naval industry. The paper discusses the development of a fault detection approach, evaluates its performance on real shipboard data-through tests on a seawater cooling system from an oil tanker and concludes with insights into the broader implications of AI-driven maintenance in the maritime sector.

Maritime transport has adapted to recent political and economic shifts by addressing stringent pollution reduction requirements, redrawing transport routes for safety, reducing onboard technical incidents, managing data security risks and transitioning to autonomous vessels. The integration of AI-based technologies for fault diagnosis and decision-making, coupled with proper personnel training, has become essential for optimal ship operation, with AI-assisted predictive maintenance emerging as the key strategy to ensure onboard systems function within desired parameters and enhance equipment availability. This study proposes a machine-learning algorithm for evaluating onboard systems performance by analyzing sensor data and mapping it to fault patterns to estimate functional states, validated through tests on a seawater cooling system from an oil tanker, demonstrating operational efficiency and reliability. The immediate advantage is reduced time for fault diagnosis by rapidly assessing the system using operational data, the algorithm enabling real-time monitoring and fault data management to minimize efforts as part of predictive maintenance assisted by machine learning tools.