| The project involved
the construction of 4 residual buildings, 3 Singaporean structures
and 2 commercial building sites with a total of 6 commercial buildings,
1 Norwegian house complete with refrigerator, wineglasses, double
glazed windows and a Baltic Pine stair case. The project also involved
several field structures including command and control structures,
an element of a field hospital, modular/ tented accommodation and
observation towers.
5200 tonnes of concrete, 7500 tonnes of soil
and 45km of fibre optics and
data cables were used in the construction. The site of the explosion
was covered extensively with multiple sensors and cameras to measure
the blast's pressure. Thirty cameras in protective housings recorded
the explosion.
The trial was sponsored by the United Kingdom's
Ordnance Safety Group and Defence Ordnance Safety Group. It was
conducted under a memorandum of understanding for defence research
between the United Kingdom Ministry for Defence, the Australian
Department of Defence, the Netherlands, Norway and Singapore.
The purpose of the trial was to obtain data
from which safety criteria for explosive storage and handling could
be determined and modelled, including whether NATO mandated “buffer
zones” around stored explosives should be adjusted.
The project was carried out on time and without
incident. McMahon Services
were praised for their efforts by all centres involved.
The Minister for Defence, Senator Robert Hill,
gave the 'all clear' on site via a
hand held radio to personnel positioned underground 800 metres from
the blast site.
In early 2002 McMahon Services commenced the
Building of structures to be used to test the results of a 27 tonne
explosion and how it impacted on various buildings. This was financed
by the British Defence and Singapore, Holland and Norway all participated
in the trial.
The British designed the concrete structure
to house 27 tonnes of explosion shells, also designed for commercial
buildings which consisted of a steel frame and a brick and metal
clad section of a composite building. The Singaporeans also provided
their requirement for materials to be tested, including glass windows
for various types of building wall panels. The Norwegians had a
small house built from a previous trial which was to be included
again in the trial. Extensive fibre optic cables were installed
from the buildings to the computers to record all the information.
Additionally the Dutch provided field equipment
used by the Army to be tested with a 5 tonne explosion. This trial
consisted of the bombs being placed in a sea container surrounded
by Hesco sand barricades to protect the equipment. Various forms
of scaffold structures, Hesco barriers and field type transportables
were tested with the 5 tonne explosion.
Around Ground Zero a series of pegs were located
at a 10 degree radius to form a spider web effect.
At the completion of each explosion the debris
was collected out to a radius of 1200 metres and was identified,
sorted and weighed for analysis. The results of this test were shared
to all countries that participated in the test.
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