Southern Cross University, a partner in the coral Reef Restoration and Adaption Program (RRAP), required an accurate way to record ship motion. They needed to measure a number of parameters including velocity, acceleration, pitch/roll, angle rate and ship heading amongst others. They turned to Industrial Measurement Solutions (IMS) and OxTS to help them solve their challenge.
From an OxTS case study.
The RRAP Cooling and Shading sub-program required a way to measure wind speed from a moving platform. To do this accurately they needed to combine the measurements from their existing sonic anemometer (that records three-dimensional wind velocity) with the measurements from an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU).
The Great Barrier Reef is a significant source of Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds (BVOCs), which are likely to be affected by ocean warming under future climate change scenarios. In turn, these BVOC emissions can affect the Earth’s radiation budget through contributing to the formation of secondary organic aerosols and cloud condensation nuclei, leading to cooling.
To enable the team to provide BVOC emission estimates accurately they needed to correct three-dimensional wind velocity for the movement of the ship. Once the three-dimensional wind velocity had been corrected using measurements from an IMU the team could then estimate BVOC fluxes using either a Bulk Flux or Eddy Covariance
approach. In both of these cases, accurate wind speed is required.
Challenges
Correcting wind speed for platform motion is not an easy task. It requires two high-resolution sensors to record data simultaneously; a sonic anemometer that records three-dimensional wind velocity, and an IMU that records the movement of the platform/ship.
The sonic anemometer and the IMU are two very sensitive sensors, and many of the technology challenges the team faced involved setting them up correctly and getting them to work seamlessly together.
For the complete article on coral reef restoration CLICK HERE.
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