Common Catastrophic Risks of Floating LiDAR System and How BA-FLS-NX5 is Tackling Them
The common catastrophic risks with a floating LiDAR campaign are:
Risk 1: Power outage due to design flaws
Risk 2: Failure of the sensors including LiDARs
Risk 3: Water ingress and submerging
Risk 4: Mooring failures due to risks in design
Risk 5: Impacts of extreme weather conditions including
Typhoons and storms
Freezing weather and heavy snow
Risk 6: Leaning, overturn or dragged away by fishing net
Risk 7: Unexpected collision with a fishing boat or a big vessel
Risk 8: Weather window is not available for an emergency maintenance
Each of the above catastrophic risks may lead to the project failure or an unaffordable delay. For BA-FLS-NX5, we cope with those challenges with the following technical and management countermeasures:
1. We design the power supply system with risk-based mindset
The power system design is fully redundant with multiple groups of solar panels, wind turbines, fuel cells, and battery banks.
Even if 50% of the installed solar panels and wind turbines are damaged, the system can still power one WindCube Offshore or Molas B300M LiDAR for one year without fuel cells, with the support of fuel cells, the system can still power one ZX300M LiDAR for one year.
In contrast, if the specific floating LiDAR's power supply needs refueling offshore or is not sufficient after an accident, you'll get a much higher chance of losing data because the spare parts, weather conditions, vessel availability, and maintenance support could all be the single point of failures.
2. We stick to full redundancy to deliver high data availability and lower maintenance needs. For all the core sensors, including LiDARs, we do redundancy. Also, with remote monitoring, we can plan maintenance in a paced manner.
3. We designed the buoy with multiple hulls and floaters, and it will never sink by precise calculation.The buoy consists of one center carbon steel hull and four floaters, and the floaters are with foam inside, which can only allow less than 10% space for water ingress. The residual net buoyancy will still be over 8.7 tons even after 100% water ingress in all the hulls and floaters by design.
4. We use robust mooring design and simulation prior to the campaign.
The most common issue is the shackle failures. We customized the shackle design to have a second protection before it loosens.
For each project, we do a simulation based on long-term (10 ~ 50 years) weather conditions, and sea bed conditions of the site. We may hire an experienced 3rd-party for our customer upon request.
5. We embrace extreme weather conditions by design.
Typhoons and storms
（1）The buoy is designed with a long counterweight to ensure high stability under high waves. Even in super typhoons, our buoy's motion is still under control: the pitch and roll always stay within +-21degrees, which is proven not only by simulation but also by runtime data. Here's the pitch roll plot of our buoy during super typhoon Yagi in Sept. 2024:
（2）With the robust system design, the buoy keeps delivering data during and after typhoons, here's some statistics for your reference:
（3）We published several cases in our news section on the website for more details.
>> Steady response of BA-FLS-NX5 to Super Typhoon "Yagi"
>> Our Stage2 type verification FLS performed excellently under Storm "Babet"
>> 100% data availability under Super Typhoon "Doksuri"
>> Strong performance from our floating LiDARs in the south China sea during Typhoon "Chaba"
Freezing weather and heavy snow
（1）Under this kind of environment, the power supply of floating LiDAR system will mostly depend on fuel cells. Wind turbines, and maybe some upper solar panels will contribute some power, too.
（2）Our design of redundant fuel cells, wind turbines, and different places and groups of solar panels was proven effective in those conditions with multiple buoys.
（3）Here's our experience for your reference, the buoys experienced temperatures at -20℃, and -14℃ but still delivered over 97.8% data availability.
6. We designed the BA-FSL-NX5 system at 6 meters in diameter (with the protection ring), 15 tons in weight, and with a long counterweight at the bottom. This kind of structure will help the situation significantly when a fishing net unexpectedly catches the buoy. Also, the hybrid anchoring (one cement block plus one anchor by default with water depth of less than 80 meters) will also help when the buoy is dragged by a fishing net.
7. We lower the chance of collisions and lower the impacts after the collision by design.
The system has a detect-alarm feature, which will detect a coming vessel and send loud alarms to lower the chance of collisions.
The system will still deliver data after a collision by elaborative structure design and full redundancy. Especially, BA-FLS-NX5 is designed with a double-layer protection ring to protect the inner parts from direct impacts.
>> The proven performance on upgraded collision protection for BA-FLS-NX5
8. A mature and full redundancy system is designed to eliminate emergency maintenance needs but also be prepared with a management perspective.We apply redundancy in our system design.
For all the core sensors including LiDARs, we do redundancy;
For the local network in the buoy, we do redundancy;
For the circuit controlling system, we do redundancy;
For the communication systems, we do redundancy;
For the data storage in the buoy, we do redundancy;
For the power supply system, we do redundancy.
We practice this principle everywhere in our floating LiDAR and together with systematic O&M management to deliver distinguished high data availability and service for our clients.