SERDP and ESTCP Munitions Response Program Manager
The Report for SERDP’s Second Workshop on Burial and Mobility Modeling of Munitions in the Underwater Environment was released last month. This report summarizes discussion topics, results, and recommendations for future research that resulted from this informal workshop hosted by SERDP in December 2015.
Underwater environments can often be dynamic locations where munitions are more likely subjected to mobility, burial, and re-exposure when compared to terrestrial environments. Goals of the burial and mobility modeling aspect of the SERDP Munitions Response (MR) program are to 1) develop predictive models to quantify behavior of the distribution of munitions present at each underwater site and 2) conduct field and laboratory experiments to gain further insight into the phenomena associated with their mobility and use the data collected to further develop and validate predictive numerical models.
Participants included fifteen attendees representing ten institutions including universities, research institutes, and the military services. The purpose of the workshop was to enable SERDP project teams to:
1) collaboratively share research progress with peers;
2) identify data gaps and coordinate data sharing to seamlessly integrate field and laboratory observations with modeling efforts;
3) define a suite of surrogate munitions of interest and outline best practices for fabrication, deployment/recovery, and tracking, including the use of smart munitions; and
4) clearly state the product expected to culminate from all relevant project efforts.
The lead Principal Investigator (PI) for each SERDP project in attendance at the workshop provided an overview of their work. Following each series of presentations, the group discussed a series of questions provided by the coordinating committee.
Based on the results from the first two workshops on this topic, we intend to make this a bi-annual affair for the duration of the SERDP investment in underwater munitions mobility.
