UACE2017 Proceedings: Comparison of a Submerged Transient Electromagnetic Detection System (SubTem) and the Teledyne Survey System (TSS) for UXO identification at Portsmouth International Port.

• Session:
  Underwater Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) Detection and Remediation
• Paper:
  Comparison of a Submerged Transient Electromagnetic Detection System (SubTem) and the Teledyne Survey System (TSS) for UXO identification at Portsmouth International Port.
• Author(s):
  Paulo Tadeu De Oliveira, Jan Kölbel, David Benjamin Rose
• Abstract:
  Given the required improvements in infrastructure to safely accommodate larger vessels at Portsmouth International Port, dredging operations were requested for the main channel along few other enhancements at the port's support facilities. During the site investigation phase, numerous objects were found on the seabed, which could potentially compromise the site excavation and therefore had to be taken out of the investigated locations. The employment of ordinary electromagnetic systems to identification of conductive material has been proved to be successful, however they lack the ability to classify the investigated target as an UXO or regular debris (scrap metal, cannonballs, etc…). The use of the SubTEM system turned out to be successful in identifying and classifying targets rather than only pointing out their location. The aforementioned system operates with partially overlapping transmit loops and 84 receiver coils. By combining data from all sensors, the system is capable of also identifying the shape and orientation of the target, which results in a substantial reduction of the number of required digs prior dredging operations take place. As result of its employment, it was calculated that the Master Target List was reduced in over 90% due to SubTEM's better filtering capabilities and a performance of over 70% was computed (conductive material retrieval), which is an enhancement of almost 30% in comparison to the TSS-440. In this paper, the authors compare the efficiency of both TSS-440 and SubTEM systems at Portsmouth International Port as tools for supporting not only the removal of large debris and other obstruction objects, but also the identification of Unexploded Ordinances (UXOs).
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Contact details

• Contact person:
  Mr Paulo Tadeu de Oliveira
• e-mail:
  
• Affiliation:
  Project Engineer at Boskalis Hirdes (Heinrich Hirdes EOD Services GmbH)
• Country:
  Germany