Microstructure Floats for Autonomous Ocean Turbulence Measurements
Abstract
We propose to fabricate and test 3 microstructure APEX floats by integrating SIO epsilometers (~epsi~) onto buoyancy-driven APEX UW floats, allowing repeat autonomous measurements of microstructure profiles down to 2000 m. Such floats will be a crucial part of our observing system as well as valuable tools for process experiments. Compared with commercially available solutions, our proposed integration has the advantage of i) lower power, ii) much lower cost and iii) ability to continue to develop the turbulence sensing technology within the US university system. Tasks include i) mechanical integration of the sensors onto the float endcap; ii) software integration of the epsi and APEX microprocessors; iii) compression of the high-rate epsi data for telemetry via Iridium and iv) field testing. As both the APEX floats and the epsi are mature technologies, we are confident that this project will result in a robust and easily usable platform for delivering repeat turbulence measurements for a variety of Navy applications.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912700
Entities
People
- Matthew H. Alford
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of California, San Diego