Propulsion Optimization for ABE, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)

Abstract

The oceanographic community is moving towards unmanned autonomous vehicles to gather data and monitor scientific sites. The mission duration of these vehicles is dependent primarily on the power consumption of the propulsion system, the control system and the sensor packages. A customized propulsion thruster is designed. This includes a specialized propeller tailored to ABE and a matched motor and transmission. A non-linear lumped parameter model of the thruster is developed and experimentally verified. The model is used to predict thruster performance and compare the design thruster with other variants of propeller and motor/transmission combinations. The results showed that there is a trade-off between rapid dynamic response and power conservation. For the typical ABE trajectory, the designed thruster provides good dynamic response and the lowest power consumption of all the modelled thruster units.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA241340

Entities

People

  • Thomas J. Woodford

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
  • Control Systems
  • Dynamic Response
  • Dynamics
  • Energy Consumption
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Marine Propellers
  • Propellers
  • Propulsion Systems
  • Seabed
  • Simulations
  • Steady State
  • Thrusters
  • Underwater Vehicles

Readers

  • Adaptive Control and Estimation with Uncertainty in Dynamic Systems.
  • Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy Engineering.
  • Robotics and Automation.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers