Livewire2: Surface Wave Generation of Electrical Power for the Wirewalker Profiling System
Abstract
Small-scale variability in the upper ocean inuences air-sea exchange processes as well as the local optical and acoustic environments. It represents a major source of uncertainty in remotely sensed imagery and is only crudely parameterized in Naval operational models. Our group has spent over a decade re ning the wave-powered Wirewalker pro ling system in order to investigate these small-scale, rapidly evolving upper ocean processes. The Wirewalker has been successfully utilized in a number of recent DRIs. At present, thedeployment endurance of the Wirewalker system is limited by onboard battery capacity. Here we propose to leverage the Wirewalker plat"form and the previous DURIP-supported development of a free-ooding generator to produce the Livewire-2"""" pro ling system. The propo"sed system will use ocean wavesfor vertical vehicle propulsion and to produce electrical power for onboard instrumentation, allowing prolonged collection and telemetry of data at high sampling rates. Livewire2 would represent a major stepforward in environmental monitoring of the ocean, with broad applicability to current and future Naval needs. The prolonged deployments it will a ord can bridge the sampling space between high frequency ocean variability (e.g. diurnal cycling) and sub-seasonal to seasonal variability (e."g. the Madden-JulianOscillation). Additionally, as this proposal will produce a DRI-ready"""" version of Livewire-2, data gathered b"y the system will form a signi cant component of Ph.D. projects for current and future students, including the incoming student supported by Lucas recent ONR YIP award.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jun 13, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912423
Entities
People
- Andrew J. Lucas
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of California, San Diego