(Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1991-09)
Woodford, Thomas J.
The oceanographic community is moving towards unmanned
autonomous vehicles to gather data and monitor scientific
sites. The mission duration of these vehicles is dependent
primarily on the power consumption of the propulsion system,
the control system and the sensor packages.
A customized propulsion thruster is designed. This
includes a specialized propeller tailored to ABE and a matched
motor and transmission. A non-linear lumped parameter model
of the thruster is developed and experimentally verified. The
model is used to predict thruster performance and compare the
design thruster with other variants of propeller and
motor/transmission combinations.
The results showed that there is a trade-off between
rapid dynamic response and power conservation. For the
typical ABE trajectory, the designed thruster provides good
dynamic response and the lowest power consumption of all the
modelled thruster units.
