Mine Burial Studies with a Large Oscillating Water-Sediment Tunnel (LOWST)
Abstract
The U.S. Navy s mine warfare community needs reliable predictive capabilities for mine burial in shallow water environments. Currently, there are no experimental facilities in the U.S. with the capabilities needed to carry out laboratory experiments on mine burial processes at full scale. This effort is for the construction of such a facility. The Large Oscillating Water-Sediment Tunnel (LOWST) is a U-shaped tube, with one open leg and with three pistons located in the other leg to generate a horizontal oscillatory flow in the test section. This unique facility has been designed to reproduce in the laboratory combined wave-current flow near the seabed. Important advantages of LOWST are the facts that flow velocities will be simulated at full scale and that a net current can be superimposed on the oscillatory flow. Sediment can be placed along the 15-m-long wave-current duct, which has a 30-cm-deep movable-bed to facilitate the study of flow-induced scour and sedimentation around structures (Figure 1). Tests could be performed both under random and periodic wave conditions. LOWST could be used to study sediment transport phenomena and related problems under controlled simulated wave-current conditions at full scale. Basic problems such as boundary-layer flows, bed-load transport, suspended sediment transport, unsteady bed shear-stress, incipient motion and ripple formation, sediment erosion and suspension, liquefaction of cohesive sediments, dynamics of fluid mud, hydrodynamic forcing on marine pipelines, and hydrodynamic control of contaminant fluxes at sediment-water interfaces, could be studied with the help of LOWST. The main interest here, however, is to use this unique facility to study the behavior of model mines, including burial or partial burial, in a shallow- water sedimentary environment for a wide range of full-scale, wave-current conditions and sediment characteristics.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA625968
Entities
People
- Marcelo H. García
Organizations
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign