HARBOR BRANCH ENGINEERING - SUCCESS STORIES

SUBMARINE RETROFIT
Looking Glass Marine LLC (LGM) began the retrofit of a 46-passenger tourist submarine at Harbor Branch in March of 1999. The submarine was originally designed and built by a Scottish firm and operated off the island of St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands. The objective of retrofitting the submarine was to improve the reliability and maintainability while at the same time simplifying its operation. The Engineering Division played an important role in the refit by providing LGM with fabrication and painting services and a marine construction facility. The submarine was successfully completed and has spent the last eight months performing practice dives in West Palm Beach while awaiting the transport to its final destination off the coast of Mexico. There, the sub will once again carry tourists for exciting underwater tours.

MOORED TELEMETRY BUOYS
A prominent example of teaming with industry to monitor and solve ocean environmental issues is our ongoing relationship with Harris Corporation in the construction and installation of the Ocean Net systems. Ocean Net is comprised of a worldwide array of telemetry buoys capable of transmitting one million kilobytes per second of seafloor, subsea and ocean surface data to satellites for transmission to scientists anywhere on the earth.

The first of these Ocean Net systems was completed in 1998 by Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. Each system consists of a 110,000 lb. buoy loaded with generators, computers, and other electronics, culminating an inertial-stabilized antenna capable of focusing a narrow beam of data at an orbiting satellite 23,000 miles away Ð even when the surrounding seas are heaving with 18 foot waves. Mooring cables, rated for 100,000 lbs., transmit data from a seafloor junction box to the buoy for transmission to the satellite. Remotely operated vehicles and deep submersibles can dock with the junction box and install science packages via underwater mateable fiberoptic connectors. Each Ocean Net System is designed to operate in up to 15,000 feet of water.

In August this year, HBOI provided the project management and expertise to deploy this system and to install it in the Tongue of the Ocean at the Navy's Atlantic Underwater Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC). NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) is using the buoy for long-term weather experiments which will compare the sound of rainfall measured at various ocean depths with conventional rainfall measurements at the ocean's surface. This information will provide high quality, surface rainfall data over the tropical ocean for use in validating and interpreting satellite rainfall observations. Underwater acoustic rainfall monitoring is an entirely new technology for gathering information about the planet's weather

MANATEE PROTECTION SYSTEMS
Harbor Branch is now in our sixth year of providing manatee protection systems for the remotely-controlled vertical lift gates operated by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. The Harbor Branch unique design is a touch-sensitive bumper that can discriminate between contact with debris and contact with the slow moving manatee. When a vertical lift gate closes, the bumper senses the manatee and automatically commands the gate to open. The manatee swims though unharmed. Since September of 1996, when the first system was installed in Miami, Harbor Branch has provided sensors for six additional structures. These low maintenance systems have all been highly successful in fulfilling the goal of "zero manatee deaths in water control structures." Currently, Harbor Branch is bidding on a four-year contract to provide these systems for 16 additional lift gate structures in Florida.

In 1997, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers asked Harbor Branch for a solution to the problem of manatee injury in navigational boat locks. Engineers at Harbor Branch invented a non-contact acoustic sensor system to detect the manatees. An array of transmitters, mounted on one gate, sends narrow-beam sound waves to matching receivers that are mounted on the opposite gate. If a manatee breaks two of these beams while the gate is closing, the gate will automatically stop and allow the manatee to swim past unharmed. In 1998, the first system was installed at the St. Lucie Locks in Stuart, Florida. A second, more advanced, system was successfully installed at the Port Canaveral lock in 2000 and the third such system is being installed this year at the Buckman Lock in Palatka, FL.

OCEAN ENGINEERING ANALYSIS
HBOI has performed the required analysis, designed, built, operated, and maintained some of the most specialized and effective deck equipment afloat. A prime example of our capabilities in this regard was the design, fabrication, installation, testing, ABS classification, and on-going operation of the world's largest, all-aluminum submersible launch/recovery A-frame crane, which is mounted on the stern of the R/V SEWARD JOHNSON.

This system was actually designed to handle the U.S. Navy's 57,000 lb. Sea Cliff Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) so that HBOI could serve as a back-up should that program require assistance. Extensive ocean engineering analysis was performed to determine wave forces, hydrodynamic, and dynamic response of this complex sea/air interface problem. Numerical and computer modeling were employed, the results of which were submitted, reviewed, and accepted by the American Bureau of Shipping to receive classification for the entire system. This massive structure incorporates complex servo hydraulic systems to sympathetically latch and hoist the JSL submersibles from high sea state conditions.

Passive hydraulic damping systems mitigate pitch, roll, and yaw degrees of freedom with active heave compensation in the main lift winch. The system, incorporating a hydraulic design purchased from an OEM, reduces to two the number of crew required to launch/recover a JSL submersible. This compares with twelve required with MSCPAC's R/V LULU, or eight crew required with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's R/V ATLANTIS II. In addition to this system, HBOI has designed and built four other manned and unmanned submersible launch/recovery systems for our various vessels, including a portable unit which is capable of working off of vessels of opportunity.