A Potential Flow Based Flight Simulator for an Underwater Glider

Underwater gliders are recent innovative types of autonomous underwater vehicles （AUVs） used in ocean exploration and observation. They adjust their buoyancy to dive and to return to the ocean surface. During the change of altitude, they use the hydrodynamic forces developed by their wings to move forward. Their flights are controlled by changing the position of their centers of gravity and their buoyancy to adjust their trim and heel angles. For better flight control, the understanding of the hydrodynamic behavior and the flight mechanics of the underwater glider is necessary. A 6-DOF motion simulator is coupled with an unsteady potential flow model for this purpose. In some specific cases, the numerical study demonstrates that an inappropriate stabilizer dimension can cause counter-steering behavior. The simulator can be used to improve the automatic flight control. It can also be used for the hydrodynamic design optimization of the devices.

Steering control for underwater gliders

Steering control for an autonomous underwater glider （AUG） is very challenging due to its changing dynamic char- acteristics such as payload and shape. A good choice to solve this problem is online system identification via in-field trials to capture current dynamic characteristics for control law reconfiguration. Hence, an online polynomial estimator is designed to update the yaw dynamic model of the AUG, and an adaptive model predictive control （MPC） controller is used to calculate the optimal control command based on updated estimated parameters. The MPC controller uses a quadratic program （QP） to compute the optimal control command based on a user-defined cost function. The cost function has two terms, focusing on output reference tracking and move suppression of input, respectively. Move-suppression performance can, at some level, represent energy-saving performance of the MPC controller. Users can balance these two competitive control performances by tuning weights. We have compared the control performance using the second-order polynomial model to that using the filth-order polynomial model, and found that the tbrmer cannot capture the main characteristics of yaw dynamics and may result in vibration during the flight. Both processor-in-loop （PIL） simulations and in-lake tests are presented to validate our steering control performance.

The mechanism of flapping propulsion of an underwater glider

To develop a bionic maneuverable propulsion system to be applied in a small underwater vehicle, a new conceptual design of the bionic propulsion is applied to the traditional underwater glider. The numerical simulation focuses on the autonomous under- water glider （AUG）＇s flapping propulsion at Re = 200 by solving the incompressible viscous Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the immersed boundary method. The systematic analysis of the effect of different motion parameters on the propulsive efficie- ncy of the AUG is carried out, including the hydrofoil＇s heaving amplitude, the pitching amplitude, the phase lag between heaving and pitching and the flapping frequency. The results obtained in this study can provide some physical insights into the propulsive mechanisms in the flapping -based locomotion.