The strategic objective of SMOOTH is to apply air-lubrication to ships and to provide new products in terms of required control- and paint systems to introduce air-lubricated ships, regardless whether it will be micro-bubble (MB), air-film or air-cavity ships (ACS), for inland and coastal navigating ships.

The consortium comprises some of the most important EU industries in the field of
shipbuilding (Aker/ Kvaerner, Blohm & Voss and Damen) and EU research centres, which form a compact group of technical developers. The dockyards also form the group of End-Users that ensure the applicability of the project outcome as well as the links to the policy and regulation making process.

The project consists of 7 WorkPackages, where SSPA is leading No. 5:

• 1 Project management
• 2 Experiments on airfilms
• 3 Scale Effects
• 4 Model tests on airfilms
• 5 Modeltest on Micro-Bubble and Air-Cavity ships
• 6 Economic and risk evaluation
• 7 Exploitation and dissemination

SMOOTH is an EU FP6 (EU Framework Programme 6) STR (Specific Targeted Research) Project. The project started in 2006 and continues during 3 years.