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In a time of escalating costs for explosive testing and mounting concerns over the environmental impact of such tests, the Navy may be able to replace, or at least offset some of the expense in conducting the ship shock trials required for each new class of ship, such as the DD(X) which is currently in the design phase. With funding from Naval Sea Systems Command and assistance from Gibbs & Cox, Inc. and Electric Boat, Mechanical Engineering Professor Young Shin, his staff and thesis students have created a computer based model simulating the whole ship shock trial in a virtual environment. First implemented in conjunction with the USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53) shock trial conducted in 1994, the highly successful underwater explosion modeling and simulation process developed by Professor Shin has been continually refined and improved upon over the past decade through numerous research projects targeting such critical issues as ship systems damping, elastic-plastic response and explosive shock scaling.
In June 2001 the USS Winston S. Churchill underwent a series of three explosive shots in order to verify the shock hardening of major design alternations made to the original Arleigh Burke Class destroyer. Response predictions made prior to the at-sea testing resulted in excellent comparisons between the NPS simulations and the physical data recorded during the shock trials, confirming the validity of this technique. Professor Shin and the NPS shock team are currently working on a computer simulation and modeling effort involving the LPD-17 ship shock trials scheduled for 2008, as a means to further validate their methodology across various ship types. It is envisioned that using the NPS underwater explosion modeling and simulation methodology, in place of typical ship shock testing, will result in the collection of valuable data throughout the design phase. Based on repetitive simulations of the coupled fluid-ship finite element model, these predictions will ultimately impact the final ship design. This process would enable the limited live fire resources to be reallocated for use in the specific testing of more threat realistic underwater explosion scenarios, such as near field shock events.
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SVCL_Brochure.pdf (868kB)
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