Abstract

This paper presents experimental results for the vibration characteristics of the small unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) OPKO 300, which was designed and manufactured by Daewoo ship and Marine Engineering Ltd. The autonomy of UUVs has led to an increase in their use in scientific, military, and commercial areas because their autonomy makes it possible for UUVs to be utilized instead of humans in hazardous missions such as mine countermeasure missions (MCM). Since it is impossible to use devices based on electromagnetic waves to gather information in an underwater environment, only sonar systems, which use sound waves, can be used in underwater environments, and their performance can strongly affect the autonomy of a UUV. Since a thruster system, which combines a motor and propeller in a single structure, is widely used as the propulsion system of a UUV and is mounted on the outside of a UUV’s stern, it can generate vibration, which can be transferred throughout the shell of the UUV from its stern to its bow. The transferred vibration can affect the performance of various sonar systems such as side-scan sonar or forward-looking sonar. Therefore, it is necessary to estimate the effect of the transferred vibration of the UUV on the sonar systems. Even if various numerical methods were used to analyze the vibration problem of a UUV, it would be hard to predict the vibration phenomena of a UUV at the initial design stage. In this work, an experimental study using OKPO 300 and an impact hammer was carried out to analyze the vibration feature of a small real UUV in the air. The frequency response function of the vibration based on the experimental results is presented.

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