Recoverable Autonomous Sonde for subglacial lakes exploration: heating control system design

Abstract Drilling and sampling are the most direct effective methods available to study Antarctic subglacial lakes. Based on Philberth probe, a Recoverable Autonomous Sonde (RECAS) allows for in situ lake water measurement sampling, through addition of an upper thermal tip cable recoiling mechanism. RECAS-200, prototype RECAS, has drilling depth 200 m, surface supply voltage 800 VAC downhole power ~9.6 kW during drilling. In this study, heating control system RECAS-200 was designed. The avoids need high-power step-down converters, by separating from power, thereby reducing overall weight probe avoiding increase diameter. We also introduce self-developed, small, solid-state, regulator fuzzy PID temperature algorithm. Their purpose manage adjustment each element provide closed-loop certain elements which can easily burn out due overheating. Test results indicated that proposed met all our design specifications could be assembled into probe.