Experimental determination of the roughness functions of marine coatings

The aim of this paper is to determine the roughness functions of different marine coatings, including two novel FOUL-X-SPEL paints and two existing commercial coatings, and two control surfaces, using the overall method of Granville (1987). An extensive series of towing tests of flat plates coated with different antifouling coatings was carried out at the Kelvin Hydrodynamics Laboratory (KHL) of the University of Strathclyde. The tests were designed to examine the as applied drag performances of FOUL-X-SPEL paints and compare them with two existing reference paints and two control surfaces. The surface roughness amplitude parameters of all of the test surfaces were measured using a hull roughness analyser. In total over 150 runs were carried out, including a series of repeat tests designed to quantify the uncertainty in the results. The drag coefficients and roughness function values of each surface were evaluated along with the uncertainty limits.