Applications – Marine

Malibu Boats makes watersports boats that create controllable wakes and waves that enable surfing and wakeboarding. The PowerWedge II is the world’s only watersports hydrofoil. It is a horizontally-oriented control surface in the back of Malibu’s boats and gets a boat ‘on plane’ quickly, then once on-plane, creates wakes up to five feet high. This makes for great wakeboarding.

Novotechnik’s RFC4800 magnetic position sensor measures the position of the PowerWedge II over a -10° to + 10° range that is optimized for maximum resolution over that limited range.

Malibu Boats also creates waves to surf on with their SurfGate dual vertical control surfaces.

On large and very expensive ocean going yachts many of the operations are fully automated. Our customer is a British company that specializes in supplying hydraulic systems for this market. One of their most recent applications was a system for "laying away" the sails after a days sailing.

• Electrically it was as easy to use as a potentiometer

• Once fitted inside a hydraulic cylinder it was perfectly protected from the harsh marine environment

• It is an absolute transducer

• Repeatability

The TM1 was fitted inside a hydraulic cylinder to measure its extension. The cylinder is used to raise and lower the boom to which the main sail is attached. The space available to pack the sail away is very limited so if the whole process is to be automated then precise positioning of the boom is required.

Ship designers have found that they can save space while getting exceptional accuracy and reliability for their command and control feedback sensors used in marine drive systems. By designing in the Vert-X 51 non-contact position sensor, used on the cruise ships shown here, ship designers have a certified marine-grade watertight sensor that measures to 14-bits and provides 360° range and switch points making additional circuitry unnecessary.

Special ships, tugboats, cable laying ships, and ferries are equipped with rudder-propeller drives in order to improve maneuverability.

Function: These rudder-propeller drives rotate a full 360° so that thrust can occur in any direction. In a multi-drive system, a satellite navigation system and a computer can be used to achieve synchronized and independent regulation, which can exactly postion the ship even in heavy seas.

A Novotechnik T50 (T/TS Series) is located inside an oil-filled cylinder. It is located in the cylinder for pressure compensation and to have the sensor operating in a good environment, since the AUV operates underwater at a depth of as much as 3,000 meters.

The linear sensor is directly connected to the Inertial navigation system of the AUV.

Rotary sensors for (cargo) shipping (vessels) have to withstand extreme conditions. It is crucial that high and low temperatures, temperature changes, salt and other corrosive substances and permanent immersion in water have no impact on the rotary encoders used in shipping and rudder control. If one of these sensors fails, this will restrict the ability to steer the ship and may put cargo or passengers at risk.

Contelec rotary sensors with a sealed aluminum housing not only offer the familiar precision and durability but are also extremely robust. One example here is the Vert-X 51 series with contactless measuring method and an IP68/IP69K protection rating that is ideal, for example, as a position input and feedback sensor for 360° ship drives or as a direction indicator unit.

For marine applications, the Vert-X 51 series and variants of this and other series with a specific CANbus interface, are certified to DNV GL (Germanischer Lloyd).