A falling rigid body through air, water, and sediment is investigated experimentally and theoretically. Two experiments were conducted to drop rigid cylinders with density ratio around 1.8 into shallow water (around 13 m deep) in the Monterey Bay (Exp-1) and into the Naval Postgraduate School’s swimming pool (Exp-2). During the experiments, we carefully observe cylinder track and burial depth w...

Three independent trials were conducted using mortality and burial as endpoints. Amphipod mean lethal concentration to 50% (LC50) was 227 microg/L. One-hour burial as a sublethal endpoint increased the sensitivity of the toxicity test by 40%; however, most amphipods that survived exposure were able to recover within 24 to 48 h. This toxic hangover was dose-dependent.

The Navy’s mine impact burial prediction model creates a time history of a cylindrical or a noncylindrical mine as it falls through air, water, and sediment. The output of the model is the predicted mine trajectory in air and water columns, burial depth/orientation in sediment, as well as height, area, and volume protruding. Model inputs consist of parameters of environment, mine characteristic...

The generation and migration of bedforms (eg, ripples, megaripples and sand bars) on sandy bottoms in the nearshore (0-8 m water depths) provides a mechanism for objects on the seafloor to become buried. As a bedform migrates past a mine, the mine will fall to the low point of the bedform trough before subsequently being buried by the passage of the following bedform crest. The statistics of mi...