Preliminary Concept Design of an Affordable Coastal Patrol Craft for Sri Lanka Navy

Abstract

The post-war role and the mission of Sri Lanka Navy has become more multi-dimensional. Newer challenges such as piracy, fisheries law enforcement, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and marine pollution prevention have become major focus areas for Sri Lanka Navy. To successfully counter these new challenges the Navy has broadened its spectrum of operations by forming the Sri Lanka Coast Guard and more recently forming its first Marine Battalion. With the introduction of these new units, there will be an increased demand for a new fleet of patrol crafts. Due to budgetary constraints a cost effective way to approach this situation is to design a single class of patrol crafts that has multi mission capabilities which can perform most of the operations carried out by the Sri Lanka Navy, Sri Lanka Coast Guard and the Marine Battalion. This research paper is about designing an affordable multi mission capable patrol craft, utilizing modularity concept and a planing hull design. The initial step in this design process was to get an understanding of the Sri Lanka Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Battalion fleets and the specific missions of each service. Then key design parameters such as length, endurance, maximum speed were recognized through this initial research. Then a similar ship analysis/market survey was carried out to select other principal dimensions and coefficients of form. After all the key design features are decided, a preliminary concept design of the ship hull form was created utilizing design software. Further analysis was carried out to generate initial hydrostatics and stability curve of the vessel, and resistance and powering calculations. Since cost reduction is the most vital aspect in this study to become an affordable design a lot of emphasis was put on the modularity concept and the learning curve concept.