Students under water!

RDP Electronics, in conjunction with MTS are providing magnetostrictive displacement transducers for Bath University’s entry in the inaugural European International Submarine Races.

The first time the event has been staged outside the USA, teams are challenged to build and race human-powered submarines which will test the engineering expertise and stamina of enterprising university students from three continents. They will compete at Gosport, (Hants GB), during the week of 25 June 2012 using QinetiQ’s Ocean Basin, the largest freshwater tank in Europe. Here the teams from Canada, France, Oman, UK, and USA who have designed and built their own submarines will then race them flooded, piloted and pedalled by a scuba diver.

The transducers donated by RDP Electronics and MTS to Bath Universtity’s team. utilise a magnetostrictive principle that permits absolute, contact free position measurement combining various magneto-mechanical effects with precise speed measurement of a sound pulse in a wave guide.

Dr William Megill, FIMarEST, Director of the Ocean Technologies Lab in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Bath, who has taken teams to the USA races on three occasions, explained, “The Races combine an engineering design challenge with the technical skill development, and sets them in a unique and exciting sporting competition. There are very real applications for the science and technology employed in these craft as we seek to find ever more effective ways of exploring the waters of the world using autonomous underwater vehicles.”

RDP Electronics offers a range of transducers suitable for submersible applications including DCW and ACW submersible displacement transducers.