摘要
A high-efficiency propeller can enable a long mission duration for autonomous underwater vehicles(AUVs).In this study,a new method with OpenProp coupled with computational fluid dynamics was developed to design a propeller for an Explorer100 AUV.The towed system simulation of the AUV was used to measure the nominal wake,and a self-propulsion simulation was used to measure the effective wake at the disc plane just in front of a propeller.Two propellers referring to the nominal wake(propeller 1)and effective wake(propeller 2)were designed with OpenProp and appended with the AUV for self-propulsion simulations,respectively.Through the numerical simulation of the AUV self-propulsion tests,the cruising velocity of AUV was obtained.The flow characteristics of the self-propulsion in pressure and velocity contours were also analyzed.The propeller designed with an effective wake improved the thrust,velocity,and efficiency by approximately 11.3%,6.7%,and 2.5%,respectively,as compared with those with a nominal wake.The cruising velocity of the final designed propeller for the Explorer100 AUV improved by 21.8%,as compared to that of the original propeller from the AUV free-running tests.
基金
The National Key Research and Development Program(Grant No.2021YFC2801100)
Key-area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province(Grant No.2020B1111010004)
Joint Fund of Science&Technology Department of Liaoning Province,State Key Laboratory of Robotics(Grant No.2020-KF-12-05).
