30mf

Growing demand for maintenance-free Standard 30 MF gyrocompass

Eight years ago, Anschütz launched a new member of the legendary ‘Standard’ gyrocompass family. The Standard 30 MF is a maintenance-free gyrocompass based on Hemispherical Resonator Gyro (HRG) technology. It has an extremely rugged design and excellent lifetime performance.

“With more than 600 installations and more than 5 million operating hours per year, the gyrocompass has proven itself in the field”, said Volker Wenzel, Technical Marketing Manager at Anschütz. “We are seeing a steadily increasing demand, because the Standard 30 MF is not only very reliable, precise and maintenance-free, but also easy to integrate.”

The Standard 30 MF is a heading sensor, motion reference unit and rate of turn indicator all in one. It features a high heading accuracy of 0.25° RMS sec lat and a high roll and pitch accuracy, and it works reliably even at high latitudes.

As a strapdown gyrocompass, it calculates heading, roll, pitch and rate of turn from angular rates and accelerations. To measure angular rates, the Standard 30 MF uses hemispherical resonator gyros, a Coriolis vibrating gyro technology.

What is HRG technology and what are the benefits?

HRGs consist of a small number of mechanical parts that are assembled in a miniature hemisphere that is uncoupled from the outside. Inside this structure, a resonator is excited by electrodes, resulting in a vibration pattern. A movement of the vessel causes a movement of the resonator, but also a different movement of the vibration pattern. The inertia of a resonator vibration relative to the resonator itself is based on the Coriolis force, a law of nature. The movement of the vibration pattern is measured by pickoff electrodes and is proportional to the angular rate.

“Typical applications include cruise ships, including polar expedition cruise ships, offshore and wind energy vessels and coastguard vessels, where accuracy and reliable uptime with no downtime for maintenance are essential”, said Wenzel. "But we are also seeing a growing demand in the merchant shipping sector."

Features of the Standard 30 MF gyrocompass

The Standard 30 MF introduces a number of additional features that significantly improve the robustness of the compass system. These include settling at rough seas, a heading output even if the speed and latitude input fails, and navigation at high latitudes.

Tests on an offshore vessel and a Baltic Sea ferry have shown that Standard 30 MF can operate reliably and with the required accuracy for more than 28 days without latitude input, giving it a unique resistance to jamming and spoofing attacks.

Advanced features are available in conjunction with an Anschütz heading management system, such as the integration of additional compasses, integrated heading monitoring, the automatic correction of magnetic heading, and an independent transmitting magnetic compass path.

The Standard 30 MF is easy to integrate into both new and existing systems. It offers a wide range of standardised interfaces, including Ethernet and CAN bus, to provide installation flexibility and minimise cabling. Configuration can be done easily and conveniently via a web server.