Abstract An environmental simulation platform (ETS-02) was constructed, for the purpose of testing the disturbances due to the environmental fluctuations, for the high-precision geodesic instruments for instance absolute/relative gravimeters, inclinometers and so on. The outer layer of the platform was constructed with two sets of rectangular electromagnetic coils, which produces the needed magnetic field with applied current. The inner layer is a closed cabin in which radiators are distributed so that the temperature of the experimental space inside the cabin can be controlled, by exchanging energy between the radiators and a thermal controller by the means of flowing liquid. A high-precision hexapod is used to simulate the tilt-related effect. The platform has a capability of adjusting temperature for the test with dynamic range of 0-70oC, resolution of 0.01oC. The noise of power spectrum density when the cabin is set to room temperature is measured to be 0.03oC/Hz1/2 at 1mHz. The magnetic field simulation has a capability of dynamic range ±300µT and stability of 20nT. The resolution of the ground-tilt simulation is 1 arc second. The inner space of the platform has a volume of about 5m3, big enough for the most instruments to be investigated for the general environmental coupling effect. To illustrate the application of the platform, a homemade dual-axis inclinometer was tested carefully with the platform, and the accuracy of the calibration factors have been improved significantly.
This work was supported by National Scientific Instrument Development Fund (No. ZDYZ2012-1-04) and State Natural Sciences Fund (No. 11235004, 91636112, 41474163).
Corresponding Authors: Tu Hai-Bo (Email: tuhaibo@whigg.ac.cn)
E-mail: tuhaibo@whigg.ac.cn
About author: Hai-Bo Tu, doctor, associate professor, with research interests lying in precision measurement physics and geodesy, now mainly working in high-precision inertial sensor design, weak force noise modeling and characteristics. Contact way: Institute of geodesy and geophysics, CAS, Xudong street 340, Wuhan 430077, China. tuhaibo@whigg.ac.cn
Cite this article:
. An environmental simulation platform and its application to geodesic instruments for the performance study[J]. APPLIED GEOPHYSICS, 2018, 15(3-4（2）): 716-724.
2018, Vol. 15 
