Detecting Shipping Container Impacts with Vertical Cell Guides inside Container Ships during Handling Operations

Area of Science:

• Marine Engineering
• Logistics and Supply Chain Management
• Mechanical Engineering

Background:

• Container handling operations, especially within ship hulls, are prone to damage from mechanical and natural factors.
• Current methods for detecting container impacts rely on manual visual inspection, which is time-consuming and requires specialized expertise.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel five-step impact-detection methodology (IDM) for identifying significant container impacts.
• To automate the detection of impacts between containers and vertical cell guides within a ship's hull.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a five-step impact-detection methodology (IDM) utilizing acceleration data.
• Deployment of a sensory device on a quay crane's spreader for real-world measurements in a container terminal.

Main Results:

• The proposed IDM successfully identified an average of 12.8 container impacts with vertical cell guides during typical handling operations.
• The methodology demonstrated the ability to detect repeated impacts in specific ship bay locations.

Conclusions:

• The developed IDM offers an efficient and data-driven approach to detecting critical container impacts.
• This system can serve as a valuable decision support tool for predictive maintenance in container terminals, reducing manual inspection needs.