DART-ETD Abstract
Presenters : Chris Meinig, Brent Pounds
The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami illustrated the value of a reliable tsunami warning system that could have potentially saved thousands of lives. Such a system requires fast, accurate forecasting of tsunamis in order to correctly asses the danger to coastal communities. The current network of 39 second generation Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART-2) buoys was developed at PMEL as a real-time measurement system to provide valuable information to the Tsunami Warning Centers and has proved effective, helping to accurately model several tsunamis and prevent unnecessary evacuations over the past two years.
The next generation of DART buoy under development at PMEL is the DART-ETD (easy-to-deploy) system, which is a completely palletized and ‘factory-built concept’ system that can be deployed from a small vessel requiring considerably fewer resources than traditional mooring systems. A key component of the ETD system is the anchor-spooling package, which deploys the mooring line as the buoy falls away. During the development testing, we experienced problems with the mooring line spooling mechanism, that resulted in the total loss of the buoy. Previous to that, the system had been successfully deployed several times in full-ocean depth deployments. These losses were puzzling and resulted in a concerted effort to characterize the fall of the anchor package to determine the cause of failure and take steps to mitigate them. Extensive testing has occurred over the past year and modifications have been made to the anchor package to reduce the likelihood of future failure.