Electronics Engineering Division, Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Praça Marechal Eduardo Gomes, 50, Vila das Acácias, São José dos Campos 12228-900, SP, Brazil.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Mar 9;21(5):1900. doi: 10.3390/s21051900.
Hydroelectric power plants often make use of tunnels to redirect the flow of water to the plant power house. Such tunnels are often flooded and can span considerable distances. Periodical inspections of such tunnels are highly desirable since a tunnel collapse will be catastrophic, disrupting the power plant operation. In many cases, the use of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) equipped with mechanical profiling sonars is a suitable and affordable way to gather data to generate 3D mapping of flooded tunnels. In this paper, we study the resolution of 3D tunnel maps generated by one or more mechanical profiling sonars working in tandem, considering synchronization and occlusion problems. The article derives the analytical equations to estimate the sampling of the underwater tunnels using mechanical profiling sonars (scanning sonars). Experiments in a simulated environment using up to four sensors simultaneously are presented. We also report experimental results obtained by a UUV inside a large power plant tunnel, together with a first map of this environment using a single sonar sensor.
水力发电厂通常利用隧道将水流改道至发电厂厂房。这些隧道经常被淹没，并且可能跨越相当长的距离。由于隧道坍塌将是灾难性的，会扰乱发电厂的运行，因此对这些隧道进行定期检查是非常必要的。在许多情况下，使用配备机械剖面声纳的无人水下航行器（UUV）是一种合适且经济实惠的方法，可以收集数据以生成淹没隧道的 3D 映射。在本文中，我们研究了使用一个或多个机械剖面声纳（扫描声纳）协同工作生成的 3D 隧道地图的分辨率，同时考虑了同步和遮挡问题。文章推导出了使用机械剖面声纳（扫描声纳）估计水下隧道采样的解析方程。在使用多达四个传感器同时的模拟环境中进行了实验。我们还报告了在大型发电厂隧道内使用 UUV 获得的实验结果，以及使用单个声纳传感器获得的该环境的第一张地图。
