The U.S. Navy‘s Littoral Combat Ship program has conducted a blast and fire test on a full-scale Independence-variant LCS replicate at the U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center to evaluate the overall survivability of the platform during combat.The Multi-Compartment Surrogate replicate underwent destructive tests that involved charges placed in several of the ship’s compartments and controlled fires, the U.S. Navy said Friday.
The Navy collected data to evaluate the ship’s failure threshold of blast-induced structural ruptures, reaction to overpressures and the effects of fire on its aluminum structure.
The Navy will use the data as a reference benchmark for computer simulations, as well as to support the Live-Fire Test and Evaluation and LFT&E Modeling and Simulation/Survivability analysis.
