Verotec, a specialist supplier of metal enclosures and subracks to the electronics industry, has worked closely in a design and manufacturing partnership with a UK-based world class Motion Systems Integrator. In the particular project, a scanning head and its associated high precision motion and gearbox drive package was supplied to a French manufacturer of portable radar units. The scanning heads cover 360° horizontally and 180° vertically in less than three minutes to produce local atmospheric data over a 10 km range.
The control equipment for the scanning head is housed in a custom designed, vertically mounted Veroshield EMC screened rack case, manufactured from aluminium rather than the normal steel to reduce magnetic susceptibility and prevent interference with the very sensitive electronic compass contained in the unit. Verotec’s TecServ+ value added service translated the customer’s drawings into the production control information required to produce the Veroshield rack case from thicker than normal aluminium sheet fitted with stainless steel EMC strip gaskets, with apertures and silk screened legends where required and thermal management fans positioned in the side of the unit.
The close range radar units are deployed at commercial airports to provide LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data to provide an all-weather 3D wind shear monitoring solution that ensures safe take offs and landings and improve Air Traffic Management, ATM, efficiency. Wind shear during the critical take-off and landing periods is an unpredictable and dangerous phenomenon that causes significant ATM disruption. The radar units also monitors wake vortices as aeroplanes take off, supporting research into consideration of real time wind information leading to dynamic plane separation rules that will further improve ATM.
The LIDAR units are also used to reduce the uncertainty during the wind resource assessment and wind turbine optimization phases during site assessments for new onshore and offshore wind farms, continuously collecting 200m wind profile data to characterise the wind resource and reduce project risk.
