15. Barnacles Growth Monitoring at KL Paus Hull Using Scilab Programming

The aim of this research is to monitor the growth of barnacle at the KL Paus hull vessel part using Scilab programming (image processing). Barnacles paste on the hull of a ship might effect the resistance of the vessel, increase friction and can reduce the vessel’s speed. The ship must then be put in a dry dock to have the bottom scraped. From the results, it is shown that barnacle grew drastically for three consecutive months and the analysis form the Scilab Blob analysis found the indicated grey, dark and red intensity with true pixel increased by 30%. The edge detection image was also able to find the starting of the barnacle growth with small size. The monitoring of the barnacles is difficult if no proper instrument and analysis processes are used. It is now commonly accepted that using computers simulation and data analysis have become widespread throughout differences areas of engineering applications. By using the Scilab software, we analysed the photos of barnacle growth that were taken frequently for 3 months.