Statistical Database Generation and Geotechnical Mine Burial Prediction Maps for Coastal Shallow-Water Fine-Grained Sediments

LONG-TERM GOALS. The ultimate goal is to substantially improve, quantitatively, the U.S. Navy s mine burial predictive capabilities including the Naval Oceanographic Office NAVO Mine Warfare operational issues. The goal also is to provide a strong technical basis for the Office of Naval Research ONR science program in mine burial prediction basic and applied research Bennett et al., 1999 Bennett and Wilkens, 2000 Bennett, 2000. The U.S. Navy s capabilities must be substantially improved to meet operational and fleet requirements in mine burial prediction for shallow-water coastal environments. This project is jointly funded by ONR and NAVO. Comprehensive interrelated sediment geotechnical databases are being developed with empirical relationships that support the developing Expert System ES and are crucial to developing a geotechnical mine burial mapping technique based on quantitative sediment properties. The geotechnical, soil physics, and sediment properties approach is essential to quantitatively and statistically evaluate and confidently predict mine burial and predicted depths of burial in shallowwater coastal environments with the ultimate goal of producing mine burial prediction maps. OBJECTIVES. The objectives are to 1 select two or three shallow-water coastal areas and carry out a comprehensive synthesis of the surficial sediment textural and geotechnical properties of the near shore 100 m water depth environments 2 conduct a comparative analysis of the geological environments in terms of the sediment properties 3 develop and analyze the statistical distribution of the sediment and geotechnical properties in terms of the environments of deposition and geological setting and 4 develop predictive empirical equations of sediment geotechnical properties and mine burial potential with estimates of uncertainty.