The seabed off North West Europe contains much unexploded ordnance (UXO), posing a hazard to offshore developments such as windfarms. The typical removal method is through high-order detonation of a donor charge placed adjacent to the UXO. This method poses a risk of injury or death to marine mammals and other fauna from the high sound levels produced. This paper describes a controlled field experiment to compare the sound produced by high-order detonations with a low-order disposal method called deflagration, which uses a shaped charge of modest size, is less energetic, and offers reduced environmental impact from lower acoustic output. The results demonstrate a substantial reduction over high order detonation, with the peak sound pressure level and sound exposure level being more than 20 dB lower for the deflagration, and with the acoustic output depending only on the size of the shaped charge (rather than the size of the UXO).

西北欧海域的海底含有大量未爆炸弹药（UXO），对诸如风电场的海上开发构成了危害。典型的清除方法是通过高爆轰炸邻近UXO放置的施主电荷。这种方法会因产生高声级而对海洋哺乳动物和其他动物造成伤害或死亡。本文描述了一个控制场实验，将高阶爆炸产生的声音与低阶处理方法（称为爆燃）进行比较，该方法使用大小适中的成形装药，能量较低，并降低了较低声输出对环境的影响。结果表明，与高阶爆震相比，降噪效果显着降低，爆燃时的峰值声压级和声音暴露级降低了20 dB以上，