A Study On Efficiency And Hydrodynamic Performance Of Hybrid-driven Underwater Glider

Hybrid-driven underwater glider is a class of new Autonomous Underwater Vehicle(AUV) developed based on underwater glider technical, which combines the advantages of underwater glider and AUV: it has an advantage of high-endurance, long-range, and good stealthiness in the gliding mode, and has the high maneuver performance and environmental adaptability in the propulsion mode. It overcame the shortcoming of the underwater gliders, and has important application prospect in many fields such as marine environment detection, marine scientific research and military application.As one of the most important performance indicators of underwater glider, gliding efficiency evolution indicator for transport economy was established in this paper, which based on energy consuming analysis. According to the evolution indicator established, the influences of gliding attitude to gliding efficiency have been studied, and obtained the optimization gliding attitude of underwater glider. The influences of rotation mode of propeller to gliding efficiency also have been studied, analysis results show that, in gliding mode, the gliding efficiency is higher if propeller rotation forced by flow, and when the propeller with a suitable rotational speed, hybrid underwater glider can obtain higher endurance and cross country speed than rotation forced by flow or don’t rotate. CFD method has been applied to predict hydrodynamic performance of underwater glider, wherein the hybrid drive glider hydrodynamic performance was simulated with sliding mesh method.The influence of gliding wings, propeller layout form to hydrodynamic performance of the glider was studied, and a hydrodynamic layout design method was established, then the corresponding design scheme was put forward.The maneuvering model of hybrid-driven underwater glider was established in this paper, which taking current into account. The gliding motion in the vertical plane, turn motion in the horizontal plane and the translation from gliding mode to level flight motion have been simulated with the model established. The simulation results show that the maneuverability of the hybrid drive designed is good.