Development of a Gun-Launched, Instrumented Seabed Penetrator System

The use of instrumented penetrators to obtain in situ measurements of marine-sediment properties has been limited to measurements at depths on the order of 10 m or less. This report describes a first-generation, gun-launched, instrumented seabed penetrator system currently being developed that will provide the capability to obtain in situ measurements at depths on the order of 50 m in soft clayey sediments and that may also be used for emplacement of solidified radioactive wastes in geologically stable marine-sediment formations. Also discussed are the design considerations that led to this first-generation system, which will be tested in the late summer of 1981, and plans for future improvements, including development and testing of a variety of instruments and development of a telemetry system with greater channel capacity.