The Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory (NSMRL) is located on the New London Submarine Base in Groton, Connecticut. It is a subordinate command of the Naval Medical Research Command.
History and overview
NSMRL was established during World War II with a three-fold mission: select personnel for training in the Naval Submarine School; instruct hospital corpsmen and medical officers in submarine medicine, and research the medical aspects of submarine and diving operations, including night and color vision, human engineering, and personnel selection. Today NSMRL's core research and capabilities include undersea warfighter health and performance, submarine atmospheric monitoring, bioeffects of underwater sound and blast, submariner psychological fitness, submarine human systems integration, diving and hyperbaric research, submarine survival, escape, and rescue, hearing conservation, and undersea health research.
NSMRL is located in Groton, Connecticut near the mouth of the Thames River and Long Island Sound.
Facilities
Two hyperbaric chambers, saturation and hypobaric capability
1000 m3 anechoic chamber
145 m3 reverberant chamber
Ten sound-proof audio testing booths
Vision and auditory research suites
Technical library
Waterfront access (submarines and diving) Diving work boat
The NSMRL auditory laboratory includes a large, 1,000 m3 anechoic chamber. The suspended cable floor and fiberglass wedges provide an "echo-free" environment that is essential for efforts on spatialized auditory displays and transducer evaluation. Additionally, there are ten instrumented sound-proof booths and a reverberant room. These facilities are integral to the work on human-machine interfaces, combat systems displays, hearing conservation, audio signal enhancement, noise reduction techniques, and diver hearing.
The laboratory has a 142 m3 enclosed atmosphere testing environment and facilities for cardiopulmonary and metabolic workload assessment. It also has maintained close collaboration with the Royal Navy and its facilities at Alverstoke, England on several projects. NSMRL's diving research program is supported by a saturation diving chamber certified to pressures simulating 350 fsw and a fully instrumented hyperbaric treatment chamber. Both chambers are capable of supporting multi-diver teams and associated medical, physiological, and exercise equipment. The laboratory also maintains an enclosed 25-foot Boston Whaler equipped with GPS and radar to support open water diving research.