The application of aerospace safety and reliability techniques in their entirety to high speed marine craft would impose an unnecessary burden both in terms of the time scales, complexity of the task, and the associated costs involved. The judicious use of fault tree analysis, coupled with a FMESA study at a functional rather than at a component level, can provide a cost effective means of demonstrating objectively the safety and reliability levels of a high speed marine craft. This is of vital importance to an industry where the individual craft design production levels are unlikely to be high when compared with the aircraft industry. The use of PC based FMEA and FTA software could further reduce the cost, particularly the "first time" cost. (A)
Abstract