The Synthetik Applied Technologies (Synthetik), Thornton Tomasetti (TT), and Saleria team are pleased to offer this proposal to develop a next generation Earth Covered Magazine (ECM) structure design using Composite Materials. The Synthetik/TT/Saleria team possess the experience, capabilities, and facilities needed to successfully design, model, simulate, construct, test, and deliver a more modular, lightweight, readily construable, environmentally sympathetic ECM design for the Navy. Our objective is to leverage lightweight materials and associated structural components to produce a more efficient means to construct Earth Covered Magazines (ECMs) while keeping the same or higher level of protection capability, making it easier to maintain and upgrade them, and enabling the military to fabricate the munition structure under field conditions. We will leverage state-of-the-art modeling and simulation to rapidly evaluate materials, components and designs.
Benefit: The Synthetik team is proposing to leverage recent advancements in defense technologies (CFD/CSD software and new materials) to develop a new generation of Earth Covered Magazine (ECM) comprised of structural components with improved energy absorption properties. During this SBIR effort, the Synthetik/TT/Saleria team will leverage innovative, advanced materials with enhanced blast resistant properties with a view to developing an alternative to heavy reinforced concrete ECM designs. This new design will be more modular, lightweight, readily construable, environmentally sympathetic than current standardized solutions. Three types of structures will be considered as part of this SBIR effort with each designed to demonstrate the applicability, efficiency and feasibility of the developed material/component to ECM design and construction. Cost and function shall be evaluated by comparison with Navy standard design of concrete structures to clearly articulate the technology benefits to project stakeholders. The development is planned in three steps: 1. Composite material development, 2. Module development, and; 3. Module application to ECM design. Based on selected or developed composite material, a structural module (building sub-component) will be developed, for integration and assembly into different ECM configurations, and validated using HFPB computational modeling. Engineering and construction procedure shall be reviewed using state-of-the-art building information modeling (BIM) techniques to acquire preliminary information about construction procedure and detail cost.
Keywords: Energy absorption, Energy absorption, magazine structure, Earth Covered Magazine, Blast Loading, Composite material, ECM, Modular design, ECM Modeling and Simulation
