Analyzing Underwater Hull Coating System Wear for Surface Combatants

Current hull coating wear models are derived from dry film thickness (DFT) measurements and are only being used on aircraft carriers, less than four percent of the surface fleet. Dry film thickness is a complicated value because it currently encompasses the thickness of both anticorrosive and anti-fouling (AF) layers and is susceptible to paint swelling. An analysis of data taken from surface combatant hulls by hull roughness analyzer is performed to provide a more reliable means of measuring paint wear as a function of paint smoothing. This method provides important insight to ablation rates and initial exploration into a potentially useful model. In 1997, Wimmer performed a least squares regression to develop a model that predicts the total coating system wear on an aircraft carrier's hull using DFT measurements taken in drydock. In 1999, Ellis derived an estimate of the mean thickness of one coat of AF and a simple method for estimating the mean thickness of an aircraft carrier hull's total coating system following two operational cycles. Both models are used to determine their ability to predict hull coating wear for surface combatants and paint application distributions are analyzed to explain some of the variation experienced in their models.Naval Postgraduate School Monterey CA is the author of 'Analyzing Underwater Hull Coating System Wear for Surface Combatants' with ISBN 9781423552970 and ISBN 1423552970.