The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited

Other

Bhp Billiton Innovation Pty Ltd

Robert John Turner

James Beresford Lee

Gregory John Adams

Graeme Joseph O'Keefe

Graham Clifford Goodwin

Peter Martin Smit

Peter Mitchell Stone

Ken G McCracken

Kevin Brighton

Timothy John Monks

Reman Murandi

Robert Cornelius Van Den Heuvel

Richard Milne Maddever

Edwin Hans Van Leeuwen

Pump apparatus comprising a base or chassis, a power unit and a reel assembly each operatively mounted to the base or chassis, a flexible conveyor conduit and flexible service line adapted to be payed out from the reel assembly and a work head including a pump operatively connected to the conveyor conduit. The work head comprises a pump having an outlet which is operatively connected to a conveying conduit, a support frame to which the pump is mounted and a powered traction drive assembly operatively mounted to the support frame. The reel assembly comprises a reel rotatably mounted to the base or chassis, a conveying conduit and a flexible service line, each being adapted to be wound thereon and payed out therefrom.

Pump apparatus

This invention concerns gravity gradiometers for airborne surveys for minerals. The gravity gradiometer comprises an inertially stabilized platform, a rotor that is between 0.4 and 1.5 m in diameter mounted in the stabilized platform, and between twelve and seventy two accelerometers arranged in complements of four each on the rotor; and a signal processor operative to: (i) subtract noise calculated from the mass distribution of the aircraft and the inertially stabilised platform, and by the angles of the gimbals of the stabilised platform; (ii) use measures of the accelerations experienced by the gravity gradiometer to estimate the sensitivities of the gravity gradiometer to the acceleration, and use this estimate to correct the gravity gradiometer output; and (iii), use measures of the rotations to which the gravity gradiometer is subjected to calculate the contribution of rotation to the gravity gradiometer noise, and to remove the contribution of rotation to said gravity gradiometer noise.

Airborne gravity gradiometers

This invention concerns an aircraft equipped for conducting airborne gravity surveys. In another aspect it concerns a process for creating airborne gravity surveys. The aircraft is equipped to perform the method using measured attitude data, laser range data and scan angle data, and aircraft position data.

Method and system for conducting airborne gravity surveys

This invention concerns improvements to gravity gradient instruments (GGI) and in particular to the accelerometers that are paired within these instruments. Accelerometers have a proof mass suspended by a spring within a magnetic field. An internal feedback loop provides a signal related to movement of the proof mass back through a reaction coil retaining the proof mass in the magnetic field, to maintain the proof mass stationary. An external feedback loop adjusts the accelerometer scale factor. The internal feedback loop provides second order compensation to the proof mass and the spring stiffness. In a further aspect the invention is a method of matching accelerometer pairs.

Gravity gradiometer accelerometers

An apparatus for reducing rotation of an article such as a bird for holding a superconducting quantum interference device for use in airborne transient electromagnetic mineral prospecting. The apparatus includes a support sphere having an inner shell and an outer shell. Liquid is contained between the inner and outer shells and a sphere has openings through which support strings project for locking to an internal point within the sphere. The strings have one end connected to an internal point within the support sphere and another end connected to a spring. The spring includes a damper for damping movement of the spring. Baffles are arranged in the cavity between the inner and outer shells in which the liquid is contained for damping movement of the liquid.

Apparatus for reducing rotation of a towed airborne article

This invention concerns improvements in the performance of a mobile gravity gradient instrument (GGI). Gravity gradiometers measure one or more components of the gradient of gravity which is expressed as the gradient of a gravity vector, or in other words a tensor. The instrument comprises a first, second, third and fourth accelerometer equally spaced around the circumference of a circle, with their sensitive axes tangential to the circle, and arranged in opposing pairs with the first accelerometer opposite the second, and the third accelerometer opposite the fourth. In use the accelerometers are spun around an axis normal to the circle which passes through its center. A summing amplifier receives the outputs of the accelerometers and combines them in a manner to cancel the common mode output signals and so produces all instrument output. One or more feedback loops extend from the instrument output to one or more of the accelerometers to compensate for errors. In general, the invention embraces the concept of balancing any feedback signal so that it is applied, after appropriate division (if required), to two or more of the accelerometers in appropriately inverted senses, rather than being applied to a single accelerometer.

Gravity gradiometer

Crawler track assembly

Growing community of inventors

Shortland, Australia

Robert John Turner