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Barotrauma Detection System

The Barotrauma Detection System (BDS) is a small and rugged underwater sensor designed to pass through hydropower turbines and extreme underwater environments. This website provides a short guide on how to use the sensors, as well as post-process the data using the BDS webservice.

The BDS sensor housing consists of two POM plastic end caps and a 4 cm outer diameter polycarbonate plastic tube, with a total length of 14.5 cm, and mass of 150 g. Neutral buoyancy of the BDS is achieved by estimating the water temperature during deployment (±5 °C) and manually adjusting the length of the sensor by screwing the flat end cap inwards or outwards to modify the total sensor volume.

Each hemispherical end cap contains three digital total pressure transducers. Each sensor is an identical 2 bar rated transducer (MS5837-2BA, TE Connectivity, Switzerland) with a sensitivity of 0.0021 kPa (0.21 mm water column). The sensors can be used up to 35 m of water depth, and even up to 45 m of water depth using a non-linear correction based on laboratory calibration.

The BDS pressure transducers are redundant, providing a fault tolerance of nearly 99 %, and each transducer is equipped with its own on-chip temperature sensor, allowing for all pressure readings to include real-time temperature correction using a 2nd order algorithm validated in a laboratory barochamber from 0 to 5 bar.