Drop Down in Speed of Fast Attack Craft

Abstract

Sri Lanka Naval fleet consists of 55 Fast Attack Craft (FACs) belonging to the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) and Coast Guard which are propelled by water jets, conventional V-drive propulsion systems, and Articulated Surface Drive (ASD) powered by twin diesel engines. Recently, the drop in speed of FAC’s has been a challenging problem to SLN. The objective of this research is to find out the reasons for the speed drop of FACs, and the effect of hull cleaning/routine underwater maintenance as a solution. The research mainly focused on gathering information related to speed with RPMs and observing changes to the hull, and finally modelling of a similar shaped hull and analysing effects on speed due to the changes in the hull form.