Design, Modelling and Application of Microcontroller (MCU) on Bilge Pump Automatic Start

Abstract

Due to the negligence of watchkeeper / late response during flooding on-board is a very common phenomena. The bilge pump on-board is operated manually and due to this manual operation, the bilge pump during collision / grounding will cause the ship to experience flooding situation. One of the example situation is Ms. Herald of Free Enterprise was a RORO ferry which capsized due to human negligence. The aim of these paper is to describe a simple design and application of the microcontrollers unit (MCU) based system. These design were simulated using the Proteus software and then later to implement and test in the hardware models. The program has then compiled in PIC C Compilers, and were programmed into the microcontroller using a programmer for PIC 16-bit microcontrollers. These design for bilge pump automatic start will alert the crew in charged through alarm signals and increase time for crew to troubleshoot the leaking problem.