MARINE SELF-CONTAINED BOTTOM STATION FOR SEISMIC SURVEY AND SEISMOLOGICAL MONITORING Russian patent published in 2015 - IPC G01V1/38 G01V11/00 

FIELD: physics.

SUBSTANCE: bottom station is in the form of a bottom-mounted, deep-water float-free geophysical equipment carrier connected to an on-board computer module installed on a vessel. The geophysical equipment carrier includes, arranged in a sealed spherical container consisting of two hemispheres, a recording unit, an orientation determining unit, a synchronisation unit, a hydroacoustic transceiver unit, a release control device, a power supply unit, geophones, a geophone filter unit and an information timing device. The recording unit includes a three-component seismic detector module and a measurement information storage device. The orientation determining unit is in the form of tilt and azimuth sensors and is mounted in a gimbal suspension. A hydrophone, a hydroacoustic antenna, a ballast-anchor and a flash beacon are mounted outside the sealed container. The on-board computer module comprises a digital information recording unit with a measurement information storage device, a control unit, a unit for hydroacoustic communication with the geophysical equipment carrier, a time synchronisation device and a display device. The gimbal suspension is based on bearings with a non-linear friction coefficient. The tilt and azimuth sensors further comprise two gradient meters mounted on an indirectly horizontally stabilised platform. The said platform is also fitted with roll angle sensors, trim angle sensors, angle of attack and skew sensors, linear acceleration and angular velocity sensors, and a computer configured for combined processing of all sensors. The indirectly horizontally stabilised platform is provided with three gimbal frames, which are fitted with three servo-powered torque motors, two three-component accelerometers with a mechanism for displacement relative to each other and a device for measuring linear velocity of the three-component accelerometers. The device further includes the second indirectly horizontally stabilised platform, which is fitted with three servo-powered torque motors, four accelerometers with a vertical sensitivity axis and a mechanism for displacement thereof, a device for measuring the linear velocity of the accelerometers relative to the bottom station, and a device for recording the time at which two accelerometers meet on the beam of the first and second pairs. All the devices are operably linked through the control unit to the computer, which calculates the desired values of the components of the deviation of the lead line in the meridian and in the first vertical, the velocity, the direction of movement, the latitude, the angle of drift, the path radius and the distance on the vertical from gravity meters to the geoid surface.

EFFECT: high reliability of the obtained information owing to high noise-immunity of the bottom station.