Hull fouling assessment through data-driven modeling

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School of Electrical Engineering | Master's thesis

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Mcode

Language

en

Pages

130

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Abstract

The marine industry faces increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with hull fouling—a buildup of marine organisms that increases resistance and fuel consumption—remaining a major challenge. This thesis develops a machine learning framework to monitor fouling-induced performance degradation using only operational ship data. Two approaches were investigated: a supervised residual-based method trained on clean-condition baselines, and an unsupervised autoencoder-based method with clustering. The supervised models, using convex hull and quantile filtering to define clean data, reliably detected fouling progression and showed residual drops after hull cleaning, enabling condition-based maintenance and even early detection weeks in advance. In contrast, the unsupervised models revealed operational patterns but required auxiliary signals to capture fouling trends. Overall, the framework demonstrates a practical, interpretable, and sensor-based solution that supports more efficient maintenance scheduling and contributes to sustainable maritime operations.

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Supervisor

Manner, Jukka

Thesis advisor

Fodor, Viktoria
Bourgerie, Rémi

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