L-3 ELAC Nautik and Transas Russian Fleet Ltd. have signed a contract for the delivery and installation of a multibeam system SeaBeam 3020 in December 2009.
The deepwater system will be installed in a new icebreaking research vessel presently under construction at the Admiralty Shipyard in St. Petersburg.
The new vessel is being built for the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometerology and Environmental Monitoring and will replace the research vessel Akademik Feodorov. After the launch at the end of 2010, the vessel will be operated by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) for hydro-meteorological studies and environmental monitoring during expeditions in the polar sea. The multibeam system from Kiel will contribute a considerable contingent to the environmental monitoring of the polar regions.
At a very early stage, while preparing the quotation, L-3 ELAC Nautik has intensively supported the customer with detailed installation proposals, individually tailored under special consideration of the sophisticated hydro-acoustic and constructional requirements of the vessel.
Latest generation multibeam deepwater systems
The delivery volume includes the 20kHz multibeam system SeaBeam 3020 in the icebreaking version, which has been successfully installed on the Chilean icebreaker Almirante Oscar Viel Toro in 2009, as well as computer workstations for data processing, the appropriate software, a synchronizing unit for the hydro-acoustic systems and an ice-proof sound velocity system.
Seabeam 3020 belongs to the latest generation of multibeam deepwater systems by L-3 ELAC Nautik. The new patented Swept Beam Technology allows for compensation of the ship’s motion such as roll, heave and pitch by a new revolutionary transmission mode, offering an extremely wide coverage as well as near field focusing in shallow water.
This new technology helps to avoid the disadvantages of sectoral transmitting and scanning. Besides bathy-metric data, the system can also present and store side scan sonar data and information from the water column (WCI).
Special constructional procedures for the transducer arrays and hydrophones allow these to withstand even extreme pressure of ice and are therefore particularly suitable for installation on icebreakers.
In addition the research vessel will have a dual-frequency survey echo sounder HydroStar 4900 with 12/200kHz, a newly developed system fulfilling all technical and scientific requirements. The system can measure and monitor the sea floor in water depths up to 10,000m.