Research, Design and Development a Model Solar Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Abstract

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) has become the main tool for exploring the oceans in the fields of science, the military and the marine economy... However, the energy problem for AUV has always been of interest to many researchers. AUV’s missions are time-limited by constraints of onboard vehicle power. Most missions are therefore short, from 4 to 15 hours duration. Solar energy is an effective renewable energy source and has increasingly been used in many fields. We can see that if the Solar Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (S-AUV) has the little surface area then the efficiency of solar collector is low. Hence, we need to optimize the structure of S-AUV. When designing a SAUV in particular and an AUV in general, one of the first concerns is structural shapes, energy and propulsion systems. However, the problem for S-AUV shaped structure is extremely important, requiring the designer to optimize between increased size solar wing and collected solar energy. This paper discusses the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to determine the resistance of S-AUV when receiving solar energy. Reducing the drag and increasing the ability while collecting solar energy are the purpose of this research. The authors developed a model of S-AUV with retractable wings and evaluate the efficiency of solar energy collection. The hydrodynamic equations with the predefined conditions were modeled and solved