USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Norman Toplosky

Anthony A Ruffa

Thomas R Stottlemyer

Peter E Seaman

Kurt M Czepizak

Frederick J Frodyma

Donald E Cressman

The invention as disclosed is a towline guide clip, an apparatus that can hold a towline in place as it is dragged behind a large host marine vessel attempting to recover a small marine vessel. The towline guide clip is designed to gradually release the towline when a small marine vessel grabs hold of the line. The additional dragging force of the small marine vessel pulls the towline out of the towline guide clip so that the towline can then be reeled in by a winch.

Towline guide clip

A soft-bodied, towable, active acoustic module includes a specially formed uspension fixture and a flexible faired body enclosing an active acoustic array. The suspension fixture is a Y-shaped tube having a single forward end and two trailing ends, one for attachment of a trailing tow cable and the other for attachment of the flexible, faired body. The flexible, faired body is an elongated hydrofoil having sections which allow lateral bending. The combination of the suspension feature and lateral bending feature allows the module to be deployed and recovered through shipboard undersurface deployment tubes. A weight attached to the faired body near the lower rear end balances the body to maintain a substantially vertical position during towing. Flow steps on the lower portion of the faired body reduce lateral oscillations.

Soft-bodied, towable, active acoustic module

A towing cable is fitted with segmented fairings, each segment being furt provided with a negative lift vane that is adjustable in orientation relative to the axis of the cable. Each vane has a channel shaped wing with the legs of the channel defining winglets one of which is attached at the inboard end of the wing to a strap that is pivotally mounted to the fairing at a point immediately behind or after the cable. The other end of the strap is releasably secured to the trailing edge of the fairing for locating the vane at a desired angle relative to the axis of the cable on which the fairing is mounted.

Negative lift device for tow cable fairing

A fairing for use with a tow cable and operable to suppress strumming vibions induced in the cable as it is towed generally longitudinally of its length through water includes a plurality of tab members extending in continuous, end to end fashion over the longitudinal length of the cables' outer jacket. Each of the tab members extends radially outwardly from the outer jacket in angularly spaced relation to adjacent tab members so that the plurality of tab members extend in an indexed helical pattern along the longitudinal length of the outer jacket.

Strum-suppressant cable for towed arrays

A large eddy break-up device for towed acoustic arrays for reducing the f noise due to the (TBL) around the towed array is described. It includes two identical halves, each having a circumferential airfoil and two flat flanges which are used to secure it to a coupling on the towed acoustic array and also to integrate the two halves using fasteners. The circumferential foil interferes with the flow noise and large eddys are broken up into easily dissipating small eddys of higher frequency.

Growing community of inventors

Voluntown, CT, United States of America

Norman Toplosky