Development of 'Unmanned and Automated' Technologies for Responding to Mechanical Shaft and Trap Fire Accidents

A technology that enables autonomous response without crew intervention when fire suppression system piping is damaged inside a naval vessel has been developed for the first time in Korea. This technology has been verified in the shipbuilding field and is expected to be practically applied to various vessels such as next-generation destroyers and mine countermeasure vessels in the future.

The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) announced on the 17th that the research team led by Principal Researcher Jeong Byeongchang developed a ‘Smart Valve System’ and completed performance verification on a 3,200-ton class vessel being built by HD Hyundai Heavy Industries.

This system was developed to address the crew shortage problem caused by population decline and to contribute to the automation of damage control on naval vessels.

Damage control on naval vessels refers to activities that prevent and recover from damage spread such as fire and flooding, ensuring the safety of the vessel and its crew.

Concept diagram of 'autonomous response' assuming simultaneous occurrence of fire suppression system pipe damage and fire on a vessel equipped with a smart valve system in the seawater fire extinguishing system. Provided by Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials

The Smart Valve System is installed and operates extensively throughout the seawater fire suppression system (a fire suppression system using seawater).

To commercialize the related system, it is important to secure response data assuming various situations on vessels currently in operation. However, there are no test vessels in Korea at present, making it difficult to install civilian-developed technology on vessels and collect data.

Accordingly, the research team installed a prototype of the Smart Valve System in the seawater fire suppression system of a vessel being built by HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and simulated piping damage situations to verify autonomous accident response performance.

In particular, this research is significant as it is the first case where industry-academia-research cooperation among KIMM, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, BY Co., Ltd., and Pusan National University verified civilian technology on a vessel currently under construction.

Researcher Jeong said, “The Smart Valve System developed by KIMM can also be applied to piping systems in industrial sites such as petroleum, chemical, power generation, and offshore plants,” adding, “By enabling unmanned intelligent ship operation and accident response, it is expected to contribute to future defense and marine mobility industries such as unmanned vessels.”

Meanwhile, this research was conducted through the civilian-military technology transfer project carried out by the Civil-Military Cooperation Promotion Agency with support from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.