Autonomous alarm system for preventing accidents due to overloading and instability of a marine vessel

Abstract

Passenger vessels in Bangladesh are a vital part of the inland waterways transports. A large number of travelers use these waterways regularly. Southern part of the country is connected to the capital mostly by water transports. Unfortunately, frequency of accidents in these waterways is also high. Rate of accidents increases during rainy season and the time of different festivals. The reason behind these accidents can be contributed to mainly faulty vessels, overloading and instability caused by the capsizing couple. A vessel can be at three state of stability- positive stability, neutral stability and negative stability. When the CG of a vessel is below the metacenter a righting moment is formed. This righting moment keeps the vessel in positive stability condition. But when CG shifts vertically upward and move beyond metacenter, a capsizing couple is generated. This causes the vessel attain negative stability. As a consequence, if a vessel heels at some angle this capsizing couple will make that angle bigger and eventually capsizing the vessel. This project deals with the real time tracking of the loading condition and movement of CG. To find out the CG in real time we investigated the possibility of mounting the load cells at important locations where the load tends to shift more. And after receiving the data from load cells placed in those locations, an estimate of total load and position of CG is suggested. If the total load exceeds the permissible limit, the alarm warms the vessel masters. And if the position of CG moves upward beyond metacenter another alarm will go off.