Abstract
Inertial navigation systems (INSs) use the temperature control system to ensure the stability of the temperature of the inertial sensors for improving the navigation accuracy of the INSs. That is, the temperature control accuracy affects the performance of the INSs. Thus, the performance of temperature control systems must be evaluated before their application. However, nearly all high-precision INSs are large and heavy and require long-term testing under many different experimental conditions. As a result, conducting an outdoor navigation experiment, which involves high–low temperature and heading rotation tests, is time consuming, laborious, and costly for researchers. To address this issue, an economical high–low temperature and heading rotation test method for high-precision platform INSs is proposed, and an evaluation system based on this method is developed to evaluate the performance of the temperature control systems for high-precision platform INSs indoors. The evaluation system uses an acrylic chamber, exhaust fans, temperature sensors, and an air conditioner to simulate the environment temperature change. The outer gimbals of the platform INSs are utilized to simulate the heading rotation. The temperature control system of a high-precision platform INS is evaluated using the proposed evaluation method. The temperature difference of the gyros is obtained in the high–low temperature test, and the temperature fluctuation of the temperature control system is observed in the rotation test. These tests verify the effectiveness of the proposed evaluation method. Then, the corresponding optimization method for the temperature control system of this high-precision platform INS is put forward on the basis of the test results of the evaluation system. Experimental results show that the maximum temperature differences of the two gyros between high- and low-temperature tests are decreased from 1.51 °C to 0.50 °C, and the maximum temperature fluctuation value of the temperature control system is decreased from 0.81 °C to 0.27 °C after the proposed evaluation and optimization processes. Therefore, the proposed methods are cost effective and useful for evaluating and optimization of the temperature control system for INSs.
Highlights
Inertial navigation systems (INSs) can provide position, velocity, and attitude independently [1].they are used extensively in land [2,3], marine [4,5], and aerospace navigation [6]
Electric heaters areofinstalled at the top of the apparatus to heating the inner chamber, and their heat power is adjusted by the pulse width modulation (PWM)
The high–low temperature and rotation tests are conducted for the second optimization, the high–low temperature and rotation tests are conducted time After to verify the effectiveness of the proposed evaluation and optimization methods.for the second time As to verify of the proposed difference evaluationof and methods
Summary
Inertial navigation systems (INSs) can provide position, velocity, and attitude independently [1]. No evaluation system can support the high–low temperature and heading rotation of the high-precision, large-sized, and heavy platform INSs. The evaluation system should contain a rotation functional unit (e.g., a turntable to rotate the INS [28,29,30,31]) and a temperature control functional unit (e.g., a high–low temperature chamber) to change the temperature of the environment. Sensors 2018, 18, x FOR PEER REVIEW study proposes an economical indoor evaluation method to evaluate the temperature control system for high-precision platform. The economical indoor evaluation method that contains high–low temperature control systems of high-precision INSs and the temperature control system of our temperature test method
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