RU67057U1 - AUTONOMOUS POSITIONAL HYDROPHYSICAL STATION FOR PROBING A WATER ENVIRONMENT AT DEPTH - Google Patents

Abstract

The proposed utility model of an autonomous positional hydrophysical station (APGS) is designed to measure and record (up to 8 channels) hydrophysical information on digital storage devices at depths of up to 1000 m.

APGS consists of a carrier equipment (ON) made of aluminum alloys. Inside the control unit, a control unit (BU), an information storage device (NI), a subscriber station (AP) of the Gonets satellite communication system and Glonass navigation system, a power supply (IP) assembled from lithium batteries, combined radio antennas (RA) of the satellite system are installed communications “Messenger” and navigation “Glonass”, leakproofness sensor. Outside, a radio transparent cap (hemisphere), a reversible hydroacoustic transducer (receiver), floats from syntactic materials, a monolithic block consisting of a winch and a power source, mounted to the HA using a frame are installed. The float is connected by two frames, which are attached to the robust housing of the ON, and two frames are connected using spacers made of aluminum tubes. Neighboring floats are connected using plates. On the upper plates (there are four of them), mounted on the upper frame, three mounting places are provided for mounting sensors and devices. A reversible hydroacoustic transducer (receiver) of a hydroacoustic command communication system (GAX), a flashing light beacon, a radio antenna of an active radar transponder, and a pressure sensor have been installed at these places. On the body of the NA there are provided pressure glands (connectors). To perform operations on the design and selection of APGS, a load bracket and a sampling device are provided.

A monolithic unit from a winch and a power source is connected to the lower frame. The winch power supply is assembled from lithium batteries.

Description

The technical solution relates to the constructive implementation of hydrophysical research tools and can be used for long-term oceanological research.

In carrying out oceanological research, various hydrophysical observation tools are widely used, including autonomous hydrophysical stations that return to the sea surface due to their positive buoyancy.

Known autonomous positioning station for sensing the water environment in depth, adopted as a prototype [Wolfson L. M., Proshkin S. G., Yurchenko V. A. An autonomous positioning station for sensing the aquatic environment in depth, a method for determining the parameters of the aquatic environment by this station and a method for transmitting measured parameters by it, RF patent No. 2184674 dated 09.09.2001], containing a container with a set of measuring modules, an information transmission and reception system made with equipment radio communications, onboard control system, power supply system, ascent and immersion system, made with a winch, as well as a buir, connected at one end to an anchor, equipped with ballast weights for trim a ki and a hollow rod mounted on the container through which a buoyer is passed, connected at its second end to the winch of the ascent – dive system, and the information reception and transmission system is equipped with hydroacoustic communication equipment.

The disadvantages of this system include the use of ballast weights for trim, which greatly complicate the use of this system, as well as the use of a hydroacoustic communication channel only for receiving and transmitting information.

The proposed utility model uses an equipment carrier with attachments in which the center of gravity is located below the geometric center, located on one vertical axis, thereby

providing the necessary stability without the use of ballast weights for trim, the vertical movement is controlled both programmatically and through a hydroacoustic communication channel, thereby freeing themselves of the above disadvantages.

The proposed utility model of an autonomous positional hydrophysical station (APGS) is designed to measure and record (up to 8 channels) hydrophysical information on digital storage devices at depths of up to 250 m (a robust housing provides tightness at depths of up to 1000 m) with the possibility of prompt transmission of information on the sea surface from use of the “Messenger” satellite communication system.

The APGS installation is ensured by free immersion on the cable (buirp) due to the negative buoyancy created by the anchor - ballast and ascent to the surface due to the positive buoyancy of the solid load-bearing housing when separated from the anchor - ballast.

To take into account the hydrological situation of the region during operation, the APGS can be equipped with sensors for depth, temperature, electrical conductivity, sound propagation velocity, etc. (up to 8 sensors) with a microprocessor-based system for collecting and processing hydrophysical information.

APGS provides amplification, filtering, digitization, pre-processing and registration on a digital storage device of hydrophysical information. In this case, the main task of the proposed APGS is to measure the hydrophysical parameters of the aquatic environment in depth, for which a special winch with a power source attached to the frame is used.

APGS is a hardware module, a system for determining the location of APGS and the transmission of operational hydrophysical information on the sea surface, a winch control unit, a hydroacoustic command system and systems for recording, preliminary processing and accumulation of hydrophysical information.

APGS consists (figure 1) of the carrier equipment (ON) 1 made of aluminum alloys. Inside ON 1, a control unit (BU) 2 is installed, an information storage device (NI) 3, a satellite subscriber station (AP)

“Gonets” communication and navigation systems “Glonass” 4, a power supply (IP) assembled from lithium batteries 5, combined radio antennas (RA) of the “Gonets” satellite communication and navigation system “Glonass” 6, air tightness sensor 8. Outside, a transparent radio cover is installed (hemisphere) 7, a reversible sonar transducer (receiver) 18, floats from syntactic materials 9, a monolithic block consisting of a winch 8 and a power source 10, mounted to the HA 1 using a frame.

The robust housing ON 1 with additional buoyancy in the form of floats 9 at full load by standard equipment provides positive buoyancy of at least 500 N, while the robust housing ensures tightness at working depths up to 1000 m.

The float 9 (top view of the APGS, figure 2) is connected by two frames that are attached to the durable housing 1, and two frames are connected using spacers made of aluminum tubes. Neighboring floats are connected using plates. On the upper plates (there are four of them), mounted on the upper frame, three mounting places 20 are provided for mounting sensors and devices. At these places, a reversible hydroacoustic transducer (receiver) 21 of a hydroacoustic command communication system (GAX), a flashing light beacon 22, a radio antenna 23 of an active radar transponder, and a pressure sensor 26 are regularly installed. There are 12 hermetic inputs (connectors) 19 on body 1. For operations for staging and sampling APGS provided cargo bracket 25 and a sampling device 24.

A monolithic unit from a winch 8 and a power source 10 is connected to the lower frame (AGPS bottom view, Fig. 3). The power source of the winch 10 is assembled from lithium batteries.

Winch 8 is designed to provide vertical movement of the APGS on the cable in the depth range from 0 to 250 m in stand-alone mode (the maximum working depth depends on the capacity of the drum of the winch 8-2. Winch 8 consists of the following main structural elements (figure 4): chassis 8-1; drum 8-2; traction sheave 8-3; two sealed electric drives 8-4; stacking roller 8-5; drive roller 8-

6; guide rollers 8-7; toroidal guide 8-8; slack brakes 8-9. The kinematics of the winch is organized as follows. The traction cable 11 enters through the toroidal guide 8-8 to the traction pulley 8-3, enveloping the three guide rollers 8-7. After exiting the brook of the traction sheave 8-3, the cable 11 enters the stacking roller 8-5, and then into the storage drum 8-2. Between the toroidal guide 8-8 and the first guide roller 8-7, a spring-loaded lever brake of the slack 8-9 is installed, which serves to fix the tension of the traction cable 11 inside the winch in case of slack in the direction of traction. Two sealed electric drives 8-4 winches are DC motor reducers, protected from sea water by strong sealed containers with built-in electronic control units. The traction motor 8-4-1 and the winding motor 8-4-2 have the same design and the same control system. The operation mode is set by changing the program of the controlling microprocessor. The 8-4-1 traction motor is designed to create traction on the 8-3 traction pulley. The control system of the traction motor 8-4-1 provides stabilization of the speed of rotation of the output shaft of the drive with a frequency set by software. The winding motor 8-4-2 provides stabilization of the winding moment of the cable 11 for laying in the drum 8-2 with a given tension moment. The shaft speed does not stabilize. For the winding mode and the winding mode of the cable 11, various moments of the cable tension are set. The value of the moment of winding the cable is set by software. The microprocessor of the winch control unit generates control signals for the 8-4-1 traction motor and the winding motor, depending on the signals from the software device, the signals of the end sensors and rotation sensors of the winch traction pulley 8-3. The software device of the winch control unit includes a timer that, at the time specified by the program, generates signals “enable / disable the drive”, “direction of rotation”. A para-permanent magnet mounted on the motor shaft and a magnetically sensitive comparator are used as speed sensors.

Using such a sensor allows you to measure the frequency of rotation of the motor shaft through the wall of a sealed container. The signals from the speed sensors and external control signals from the software of the winch control unit are supplied to the engine control microprocessor. In the control system of the traction motor 8-4-1, the mode of limiting the engine speed using the signals of the speed sensors is used. In the drive of the winding motor 8-4-2, signals from speed sensors are not used. The winding motor is powered by direct current, which allows to stabilize the traction moment regardless of the speed of rotation of the motor shaft. The pulling force on the winch cable is not less than 500 N at a sampling speed of not more than 0.05 m / s. The supply voltage of the drive is 12 V, the current consumption under load is 5–20 A. The operating depth of the winch is up to 1000 m when filling the protective housings of the motors with a liquid dielectric with the equation of external and internal pressure, “Dry” operation to depths of 250 m is possible. The capacity of the winch drum is about 400 m with a cable diameter of 3 mm.

The APGS 2 control unit is a microcontroller that controls all the APGS devices according to a given program or by a command received via a sonar communication channel or via a radio channel (on the surface).

The power source 5 is assembled from lithium rechargeable batteries, which currently provide the maximum capacity per standard unit of weight and size characteristics of the batteries. The power source is installed so that the center of gravity of the assembled station is located below the waterline to ensure the stability of the station on the sea surface.

The information storage device (NI) 3 is intended primarily for the accumulation of registered information:

- receiving signals from hydrophysical sensors;

- preliminary processing of the registered information by the filter - amplifier;

- analog-to-digital conversion of information;

storing information in the buffer memory of RAM, then in non-volatile memory device CF and HDD.

The system of accumulation of registered data is based on a single-board microcomputer Persior CF-1. CF-1 is based on Motorola MC68SK338 microcontroller and includes 1Mb flash memory for data and programs, as well as 250 Kb of static RAM.

For non-volatile data storage, a Compact Flash (CF) card with a capacity of 16 Mb or more is used. CF-1 comes with its own Pico DOS operating system, which allows you to create a file system compatible with MS DOS on the Compact Flash card. For the development of target programs, the Metrowerks Code Warrior Pro C / C ++ compiler was used.

As a storage device, a 2.5 HDD with a capacity of 40 GB is used, which is connected to the CF-1 through the expansion card Persistor Big IDEA.

The data storage system software is a set of three independent programs. They are located in three different areas of flash memory and are used for various purposes. The settings accumulation program Settings allows you to view and set such registration parameters as the number of channels, sampling frequency, data buffer sizes, diagnostic modes without recompiling and restarting the accumulation program.

In order to reduce energy consumption during the accumulation process, a three-stage buffer is used. Data from the ADC is accumulated in a buffer located in RAM. After filling this buffer, all its contents are transferred to a larger buffer, which is located in a special section of Compact Flash. When the buffer located in Compact Flash is full, the HDD controller is turned on and the contents of the buffer are transferred to the file. After recording the file, the HDD turns off. Such a cycle by an autonomous station is repeated many times until the work is completed.

The characteristics of the GAX exchange signals between ship equipment and APGS have the following parameters:

- the exchange of signals between the supply vessel and the GAKS APGS is carried out in the range of operating frequencies from 10 to 40 kHz;

- working frequency band - 1 kHz;

- signals are transmitted synchronously by the method of relative phase modulation with a speed of 200 Baud;

- the amount of digital information transmitted from the APGS to the ship is up to 20 kb.

A subscriber station (AP) 4, using the combined antenna of the Gonets satellite communication system and Glonass navigation 6, allows the supplying vessel, which searches for a station on the sea surface, to determine the station's location. Also, using AP 4, operational transfer of hydrophysical information to a research center can be carried out, which can be located at almost any point.

The radio antenna of the active radar transponder 17 allows using the ship's standard radar to determine the location of the APGS. The active radar transponder in the 3 cm range provides two marks on the screen of the navigation radar, characterizing the range and course of the APGS.

Flashing light 16 has an IFK-50 lamp with a light flash energy of 1 kJ, flashes follow at intervals of 8 seconds.

Based on the signal from the pressure sensor 20 in the above-water position, the BU 2 includes a flashing beacon 16, AP 4 of a satellite communication and navigation system, and at the same time it is ready to reflect the location signal from a standard radar using the antenna 17 of the active radar transponder, which makes it possible to clearly mark the station's location on the sea surface. In the underwater position, according to the signal from the pressure sensor 20, the control unit 2 disables the subscriber station 4 of the satellite communication and navigation system.

The control unit 2 according to the program turns on or off the unit of the hydroacoustic command system (GAX), executes all the commands received via the hydroacoustic communication channel using a reversible transducer

15. In addition, the control unit 2 controls the accumulation modes NI 3 and the operating mode of the winch 8 according to a given program.

The work of the APGS is as follows.

On board the supply vessel, before setting up the APGS with a winch, a complete training cycle takes place, including the inclusion and testing of various units and blocks, entering the station's work program into the control unit 2. After testing and assembling the APGS with a winch as a whole, the position is determined (depth of place should not exceed 250 m). Then, ballast 12 is taken overboard of the supplying vessel, then the cable 11 is slowly pitted and, finally, lastly, we drop overboard the APGS. With a depth of place of up to 250 m (at small values of the current velocity, the depth of the place may turn out to be large), APGS is initially located on the sea surface. According to the program incorporated in the software device of the winch control unit, the winch begins to wind the cable onto the drum and the APGS starts to move down. From this moment, the APGS begins to record hydrophysical information. The winch operation is completely determined by the embedded program or command received via the sonar communication channel. During periods of surfacing, the APGS on the surface conducts a communication session with the supplying vessel or with the data center. After the work program has been completed, the APGS ascent occurs only by commands received via the hydroacoustic communication channel through the GAKS from the supporting vessel or the APGS control unit. According to the command received from the control unit 2, the winch 8 begins to unwind the cable, as a result of which, the APGS begins to rise until it emerges to the sea surface. After the APGS is detected by the supplying vessel, the APGS is selected to the vessel for carrying out post-production tests and processing the accumulated information.

Claims (3)

1. Autonomous positional hydrophysical station for sensing the water environment in depth (APGS), containing the equipment carrier with a set of measuring modules, an information transmission and reception system made with radio communication equipment, an onboard control system, power supply system, ascent and immersion system, characterized in that a winch is used with a power source in the form of a monoblock, which are attached to the frame. 2. Autonomous positional hydrophysical station according to claim 1, characterized in that floats from syntactic materials are used as additional buoyancy. 3. Autonomous positional hydrophysical station according to claim 1, characterized in that a hydroacoustic command system is used to control the movement of the APGS.