Numéro : 2747 - Year : 2019
Preliminary design of energy-propulsion systems of autonomous submarine vehicles
Hervé KERMORGAN - ECA Group Robotics - La Garde (France)
Many autonomous vehicles are designed to perform long missions at constant speed (cartography of sea bottom, research of objects ...). However the operational use of these vehicles gets more and more expensive when the vehicles are heavy. For this purpose, the designer is helped by the existence of systematic families of propellers of known characteristics. Such data give the possibility to define the optimal propeller when the drag of the vehicle is known. However:
- On the one hand, the propulsive efficiency is only a part of the efficiency of the propulsion chain, and, in the case of electric propulsion, the conditions of a good engine performance are rather the opposite of the conditions of a good propulsive performance. How to define then the right compromise when operational conditions prohibit the implementation of a speed reducer ?
- On the other hand, a good electric motor is often a heavy engine. Does this good performance make it possible to reduce the mass of the energy dedicated to propulsion sufficiently ? It's not always the case. Thus, it seems natural to define the total mass of the energy-propulsion system as a criterion to be taken into account for the designer instead of the notions of optimal performance for the propeller or motorization.
The paper addresses these different issues.
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