Speed up of Wave-Driven Unmanned Surface Vehicle Using Passively Transformable Two-segment Foils
Lyucheng Xie, Hongzheng Cui, Tin Lun Lam
Abstract
For wave-driven unmanned surface vehicles (WUSVs), utilizing oscillating foils is the most straightforward and common wave energy conversion mechanism. Improving the thrust of the oscillating foil to increase its speed can help WUSVs improve their maneuverability and shorten the completion of ocean missions. This paper proposes a novel transformable two-segment foil, improving the wave energy-converting efficiency to provide more average thrust in every wave cycle. We estimate their working effectiveness numerically with a simple model to verify that the design enhances foils' thrust force. The thrust enhancement was further confirmed by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations, and we estimated the suitable values of parameters of the foils in several different common sea conditions in coastal waters by CFD simulations. We design and make two wave gliders with traditional and transformable two-segment foils and finish the speed enhancement experiments. The speed enhancement is verified, and transformable two-segment foils can increase the speed of WUSVs by 10% in similar sea conditions in experiments.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2022_speedupofwavedri,
title = {Speed up of Wave-Driven Unmanned Surface Vehicle Using Passively Transformable Two-segment Foils},
author = {Lyucheng Xie and Hongzheng Cui and Tin Lun Lam},
booktitle = {IROS 2022},
year = {2022}
}