Research and Development of a Multi-Point High-Precision Displacement Measuring System for the Installation Space of Vibration Isolation on Submarine Raft Structures

Abstract

The well installed status of raft vibration isolation is undoubtedly of great significance in marine engineering, especially for submarines. To achieve this, the accurate measurement of the installation space of the vibration isolation is necessary. The traditional measuring technique has many drawbacks. Therefore, simultaneously measuring the multi-point spacing with high precision between two metal surfaces is the focus of this work. Based on eddy current sensing principle, a multi-point spacing measuring system with a simple structure and good measurement accuracy has been developed and reported. The system includes a sensor array component, an integrated controlling component, and a calibration platform. The measured data from multiple points are obtained at the same time through the sensor array and are uploaded to the host computer and a corresponding LabVIEW program was exploited to display, process, and store the spacing results. Furthermore, the least square algorithm has been employed to calculate the flatness of the measured metal surfaces, and the GUM (guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement) method has been applied to evaluate the flatness error uncertainty. The experimental tests show that each measuring duration only lasts for seconds to get results and the error uncertainty of the measured surface flatness could reduce to less than 1.0 μm. The developed measuring system has better efficiency and higher precision compared to traditionally manual operations. The measuring and analysis method could also be applied to other related situations.