Contribution
R&D project NAVESS - Environment-friendly blasting at sea
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Unexploded ordinance (UXO) is a major health and safety concern and environmental issue, which poses significant risk to offshore construction projects. UXO disposal is usually carried out by blasting, which may be at risk of fatality, auditory injury for marine life. Only few studies are public available for unmitigated blasting noise. Such studies point out impact ranges for avoiding temporal threshold shifts will only be reached in > 10 km distance. In the funded R&D Project NAVESS by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation the existing underwater noise measurement data caused by mitigated and unmitigated detonation of explosive charges and UXO disposals were selected (718 data sets from 141 detonations, measurement distances from 750 m to 33 km; TNT-equivalent mass 50 g to 325 kg). The aim is to investigate the most important site- and project-specific influencing parameters on unmitigated blasting noise and to investigate the possibilities of reducing the blasting noise. The most important influencing parameters will be presented for unmitigated detonations. Furthermore, the achieved insertion loss of applied single/double Big Bubble Curtains will be presented based on detonations with/without under comparable conditions.