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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 Gibb& Cox, Inc. and Electric Boat, Mechanical Engineering Professor Young Shin and his thesis students have created a computer based model simulating the whole ship shock trial event 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 comparison between the NPS simulations and the physical sensor data recorded during the shock trials, confirming the validity of using such a 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 June 2006, to further validate their methodology across various ship types.
It is envisioned that by using the NPS underwater explosion modeling and simulation methodology in place of the typical whole ship shock trial testing, valuable shock and vibration information will be gathered during the ship design phase based on repetitive simulations of the coupled fluid-ship finite element model and will in turn impact the final ship design. This would then enable the limited live fire resources to be better redistributed for the specific testing of more threat realistic underwater explosion scenarios, such as near field shock events. See brochure.
Ship
Shock Trial Simulations (PPT)
For further information please visit the Shock and Vibration Computational Laboratory website
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