Brüel & Kjær completes delivery of BAE HVME System

The HVME system will be deployed on HMS Audacious, the fourth boat in the UK Royal Navy's Astute-class, nuclear-powered attack submarine construction programme.

The Brüel & Kjær HVME system will provide monitoring and analysis facilities of structure-borne noise generated in the submarine. The purpose is to assist ship staff to maintain a low noise signature by monitoring and analysing both hull vibration and hydrodynamic noise.
The state-of-the-art data acquisition and vibration monitoring system is based on Brüel & Kjær’s COTS (Commercial-off-the-Shelf) sensors and PULSE data acquisition and analysis platform.

The PULSETM modular and scalable platform, with over 12,000 systems sold worldwide, includes the flagship LAN-XI acquisition unit. The ‘hand-sized’ network-based LAN-XI modules provide a distributed architecture to give installation flexibility and drastically reduce amounts of sensor cabling.

Brüel & Kjær Sound and Vibration Measurement A/S, www.bksv.com, with headquarters in Denmark, is a subsidiary of UK-based Spectris plc. Brüel & Kjær are world leaders in acoustic and vibration measurement systems & solutions.

Brüel & Kjær underwater acoustics products and solutions range from sensors and exterior/interior noise source identification and noise mapping systems, through complete acoustic ranging and noise self-monitoring solutions.

BAE Systems Submarine Solutions based in Barrow-in-Furness North-west England, is a wholly owned subsidiary of BAE Systems (www.baesystems.com), responsible for the development and production of submarines.

The company is currently constructing the Astute-class submarine, a new generation nuclear attack submarine (SSN) for the Royal Navy, the first of which was launched on 8 June 2007.