9 The Ohio State 



University Measurements 

 at SUPERTANK 1 



Introduction 



Background 



As part of its mission to maintain the nation's major waterways, ports, and 

 harbors through dredging operations, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has 

 initiated the Dredging Research Program (DRP). One of the technical areas 

 of the program focuses on obtaining an improved understanding of the 

 physical processes occurring at and around dredged-material disposal sites. 

 The area includes development of improved site monitoring techniques, acqui- 

 sition of field data sets to improve understanding of processes occurring with- 

 in the bottom boundary layer (BBL) at the water/sediment interface, and 

 development of computational techniques which may help predict the short- 

 and long-term fate of materials associated with dredged material disposal 

 areas. 



Design and construction of the Acoustic Resuspension Measurement 

 System (ARMS) at The Ohio State University (OSU) have been completed in 

 partial fulfillment of these goals. ARMS is a bottom-sitting suite of acoustic 

 instruments and their associated electronics. The instrument package collects 

 and processes in situ data pertaining to the resuspension and transport of 

 sediments by the combined effects of waves and currents in the BBL. 

 Previous versions of ARMS have been deployed at open-water, dredged-mate- 

 rial disposal sites; see, for example, Bedford et al. (1990) and Bedford, Wai, 

 and van Evra (1987), but such instruments have never before collected data 

 within the controlled conditions of the laboratory. 



152 



'Written by Keith W. Bedford, Sean O'Neil, Robert van Evra III, and Jongkook Lee, The Ohio 

 State University. 



Chapter 9 The Ohio State University Measurements 



