Publikation
Europa Explorer: Development of a Hydrodynamic Casing for the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Philipp Kloss
DFKI GmbH, DFKI Documents (D), Vol. 14_06, No. 1406, Selbstverlag, 2014.
Zusammenfassung
The poster gives a compact summary about the ”biological inspired“ shape design and shape optimization of
the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) from the project Europa-Explorer. An adequate shape design
for the AUV minimizes the drag and elongates the mission time using active propulsion. In addition to
that it supports as well the passive gliding. The main question was how to describe an assumed adequate
biological shape from fishes or marine mammals technically and with which method this shape can be further
optimized in a natural way with technical boundary conditions. The NACA (National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics)-Profile description offers a good possibility to describe the shape of a tuna technically, this
built the basis for the template of the tuna shape design. In addition this ”tuna“ shape forms the start
geometry for the stern section shape optimization via an evolution strategy. The shape optimization is
based on an evolutionary optimization algorithm coupled with numerical fluid dynamics. With this shape
optimization method the drag could be reduced by 28,8The result shows that the chosen shape and the
optimization method are, in the present case, convenient to improve the hydrodynamic properties of the
AUV.