ASA 124th Meeting New Orleans 1992 October

4pEA10. Technical summary of the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC)---Open Water Facility (OWF).

David M. Furlong

Code 5043, NAWC, Warminster, PA 18974

The NAWC-OWF is a Navy-owned facility dedicated to the development and measurement of sonobuoy transducers. It is located at a flooded quarry in Pennsylvania about 30 mi north of Philadelphia. Measurements are performed from a laboratory barge where the water depth is 60 ft and the nearest wall is 180 ft away. Acoustic and mechanical measurements consist of: (a) transmitting and receiving responses, (b) directivity patterns, (c) impedance and admittance, (d) hydrostatic simulation up to 8000 psig, (e) flow simulation from 0.1 to 1.0 kn using a 100-ft I beam rail, (f) first-order sea-state simulations up to sea state five, and (g) lift and drag with 18 data channels. Data are obtained via hard wire or rf link. The low-frequency cutoff is 200 Hz for pulse measurements and 3 Hz for continuous wave (CW) measurements. Instrumentation is controlled with menu-driven software and data outputs are real time in paper, disk, or tape format. The facility weight limits, in water, are 500 lbs for acoustic data and 100 lbs for mechanical data. The facility has phone and FAX service and a photo copy machine.