Abstract
Autonomous Underwater Helicopter (AUH) is a disk-shaped Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), and it has comparative advantage of near-bottom hovering and whole-direction turn-around ability over the traditional slender AUV. An optimization design of its irregular geometric profile is essential to improve its hydrodynamic performance. A parametric representation of its profile is proposed in this paper using Non-Uniform Rational B-spline (NURBS) curve. The parametric representation of AUH profile is described with two decision variables and several data points. Based on this parametric curve, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation is carried out to evaluate its hydrodynamic performance with various parameters. A predication model is established over variables’ design space using Kriging surrogate model with CFD simulation results and a Genetic Algorithm (GA) procedure is conducted to find optimal design variables, which can produce an optimum lift-drag ratio. CFD verification results confirm that AUH profile with optimized design variables can increase its lift-drag ratio by 2.11 times compared with that of non-optimized ones. It demonstrates that the parametric representation and optimization procedure of AUH profile proposed in this paper is feasible, and it has a great potential in improving AUH’s performance.
Highlights
Autonomous Underwater Helicopter (AUH) is a novel disk-shaped, multi-propelled underwater vehicle, which is typically distinguished from traditional torpedo-shaped Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) in its configuration
This paper aims to construct a parametric representation of AUH’s profile and improve its hydrodynamic performance, taking advantage of the existing feasible method
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation process mainly consists of two parts: the determination of AUH’s height and the simulation on decision variables’ predefined sample points
Summary
Autonomous Underwater Helicopter (AUH) is a novel disk-shaped, multi-propelled underwater vehicle, which is typically distinguished from traditional torpedo-shaped Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) in its configuration. This configuration makes it gain advantages in high mobility such as flexible steering, minimum radius of gyration and spot hovering. Non-Uniform Rational B-spline (NURBS) is used to model real natural or artificial objects with a cloud of data points on their surface in most CAD software [9,10], especially in the geometric design of complex curves and surfaces such as aircraft, cars and ship hulls. NURBS curve is selected to represent AUH hull, whose shape profile is depicted with several data points and certain design parameters. The parametric representation of AUH’s profile is the basis to improve its performance for follow-up research
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