970 G. New Patents OLR (1990) 37 (10)

This Section contains abstracts and, where appropriate, illustrations of recently issued United States patents andpublished patent applications filed from over 30 countries under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. This informationwas obtained from recent additions to the Pergamon PATSEARCH@ online database in accordance with interestprofiles developed by the Editors. Further information about Pergamon PATSEARCH@can be obtained fromPergamon Orbit IofoLine Inc., 8000 Westpark Drive, McLean, Virginia 22102 U.S.A.

Copies of complete patents announced in this Section are available from Pergamon Orbit IofoLine Inc. for $8per copy. Payment with order is required. Orders outside North America add $2 for air postage. Order by patentnumber for Pergamon Orbit InfoUne only.

4896996

WAVE ACTUATED COASTALEROSION REVERSAL SYSTEM

FOR SHORELINES

William Mouton, Robert Grush, Dolores Alton

The critical loss of thousands of acres ofshoreline, beaches, and wetlands each year is dueto the simple loss of one grain of soil, silt, orsand, one grain at a time. The use of very thinprecast concrete truncated conical sections, orbeach-cones installed with interlocking leak­resistant interstitial wave-blocks in a simplegeometric pattern, reverse the daily cycle ofbuild-up and erosion by accelerating the build­up and preventing the recurring wash-out ofsandy material picked up and carried out byretreating waves. The beach-cone geometrysmoothly absorbs the energy of the sand-carriedwaves, dispersing the energy of the wave andretaining the material deposited into the centerof the beach-cones . This process begins at thenext high-tide after installation. The critical ero­sional effect of wave undertow is eliminated. Inaddition, the blockage effect of a row of beachcones builds up a new beach on the shore-side ofthe installation when the cones are installed atthe water's edge at low tide.

4899845

ECHOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUE­BASED METHOD AND

APPARATUS TO DETECTSTRUCTURE AND ANOMALIESOF THE SUBSOIL AND/OR SEA

BOTTOM AND THE LIKE

Canneli Bosco, D'ottav Enrico, Rome, Italy as­signed to Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche

An echographic technique based method forprospecting of the subsoil or sea bottom and thelike, by means of acoustic waves and carried outby the use of an apparatus constitued, in com­bination of a known acoustic wave transmittingequipment (1) comprising of a body (6,8) in theinside of which a chamber (9) is fanned definedby an internal reflectingsurface (7) shaped like around paraboloid of axis (Y-Y), closed at thebase by an elastic diaphragm (5) and filledwith aproper liquid, into which acoustic wavesare em­itted produced by a pair ofmain electrodes (lOa,lOb) associated with an auxiliary dischargepriming electrode (11)put between the first ones.The equipment (1) will be installed at a pre­determined distance D from a receiving equip­ment (2) having a body structure (6a, 8)substantially like to that of the equipment (2),but that near the focus of it internal parabolodicreflecting surface (7) has a ceramic piezoelectricdetector (13) mounted on the lower end of a hol­low rod supported by the head (6a) of said body,by means allowing said detector (13) to be movedinto the chamber (9) with respect to the focuswithin a range of predetermined value in anydirection.

4902430

METHOD FOR CLEANINGCERTAIN ESTUARIES, HARBORS,

AND LAKES

Melvin N Peterson assigned to The UnitedStates of America as represented by theSecretary of Commerce

An arrangement for removing toxic sedimentarymaterial (101) from a large body of water (102)by forming a large number of core holes (100) inat least the sediment layer (101); inserting sedi­ment trap receptacles (200) in the core holes

OLR (1990)37 (10) G. New Patents 971

(100); allowing the sediment trap receptacle(200) to fill up with toxic sediment (101); andthen withdrawing, emptying and reinserting thetrap receptacles (200) within the core holes (l00)to effect the removal of the toxic sediment (101)from the body of water (102).

4904943

METHOD FOR DETECTINGLONG WAVES AND PREDICTING

EARTHQUAKES

Koz Takahashi, Higashi Kurume, Japan as­signed to Communications ResearchLaboratory Ministry of Posts and Tele­communications

A method for detecting earthquakes comprisesthe steps of picking up pre-earthquake longwavesor earth currents at four or more observa­tion points located underground or at the seabottom, carrying out a computation based onthe interrelation among the so-obtained =signals to obtain the three-dimensional distribu­tion of the sources and intensities of the longwavesor earth currents, and predicting the focalregion, scale and time of occurrence of earth­quakes from the time-course variation in the so­obtained three-dimensional image of the wavesource.

4908800

MULTI-CHANNEL ACOUSTICSIMULATOR

Marc C DiLemmo assigned to The United Statesof America as represented by the Secretary of theNavy

A plurality of hydrophone output signalsrepresentative of an ocean bottom are simulatedto test a receiver of the sonar sounding system.The phase shift of the output of each hydro­phone at each snapshot is determined along withthe amplitude. This information is stored for useduring simulation. During the simulation, a car­rier signal, along with the recorded phase shiftamplitude information, are applied to a phaseshifter to phase shift the carrier signal in ac­cordance with the recorded phase shift data for

each channel and attenuate the phase shiftedsignal. The phase shifted and attenuated outputis applied to a channel of a receiver of the sonarsounding system. Two phase shift wordsrepresentative of the phase shift of the hydro­phone can modulate a master and a delayedmaster respectivelyto provide better results. Thephase shift data may be selectively applied to thereceiver of the sonar sounding system to test thereceiver at a plurality of different resolutions.

4910715

MARINE SEISMIC STREAMERCABLE

Carl H Savit

A plurality of sensor arrays are mounted in astreamer cable. The sensors within each array aredistributed over an elongated two-dimensionalvertical plane. The seismic streamer cable is soconstructed that its vertical dimension is sub­stantially greater than its width and the top por­tion is relatively more buoyant in the water thanthe bottom portion. Because of that configura­tion the streamer cable resists vertical strummingand, when the sensor arrays are used in the dif­ferential mode, there is no orientationuncertainty.

4910716

SUPPRESSION OF COHERENTNOISE IN SEISMIC DATA

Rodney L Kirlin, William J Done, BritishColumbia, OK, Canada assigned to Amoco Cor­poration

A method is disclosed to suppress coherent noisein seismic data. Based on the Karhunen-LoeveTransform, this method trains on a region con­taining undesired coherent noise. Eigenvectorsdetermined from the convariance matrix of thatnoise are used to reconstruct the noise through­out the data set. Subtracting the reconstructionfrom the original data leaves a residual in whichthe coherent noise has been suppressed. Ap­plying this method to a shot record of marineseismic data illustrates that the procedure doessuppress noise on actual seismic data.

972 G. New Patents

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