SPAWAR, a research and development side of the U.S. Navy, needed a way to bury classified payloads below the seafloor in order to anchor the devices. They currently use a jetting system that costs around $20,000 to do it, and they desired a cheaper system capable of performing the same tasks. SPAWAR presented the project to Cal Poly Mechanical Engineers as a senior project in the fall of 2016.
The design team that decided to take on the project was interested in creating the system with two key factors in mind in order to make the device less expensive.
1. Find the minimal water jet pressure and flow rate requirements to allow for a payload to bury itself.
2. Create the system using as inexpensive stock materials as possible without compromising functional requirements.
After creating the system our team was able to test and verify its functionality and found that it was able to successfully bury itself and complete almost every required task. One of the largest issues we ran into was the fact that our Node, or the capsule that holds a payload, was too light and would become buoyant at certain depths.
While analyzing the tests we ran, we were able to create a list of recommendations as to what SPAWAR should do when creating their system in order to make it cost effective and functional. The following report details the design, build, test, and report process that the team underwent to create the functioning Low-Cost Jetting System
