Silent Safety: Assessing the procedures regarding cavitation inception on naval vessels during a multi-day anti-submarine warfare exercise

Abstract

Cavitation is one of the strongest sources of underwater radiated noise (URN) caused by ships. Next to the ecological impact, preventing cavitation is essential for crews on naval vessels, as the URN caused by cavitation can be used by submarines to detect the ship. As this prevention process requires the crew of a vessel to act on cavitation information, it is necessary to understand the current cavitation-related processes on board. We conducted a FRAM based on a NATO anti-submarine exercise and compared the work as intended to the work as done by the bridge teams. The intended goal of the system is achieved, but the system lacks the resilience to cope with mistakes and unexpected events. Several workarounds in the work as done have been identified that are being used to relieve the strain on the system. The watch officer has the highest workload and frequently offloads tasks to others on the bridge. This lowers the workload but potentially causes problems that the overall system cannot mitigate.

Keywords: Socio-technical Systems, Human Factors, Resilience Engineering, Cavitation, Signature Management, Anti-submarine Warfare, Navy, HMI, FRAM

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007549