Small unmanned underwater vehicle (UUVs) with advanced capabilities are now being developed for use in military, scientific and commercial applications. The increasing sophistication of microprocessors and acoustic datalinks are enabling these vehicles to be considered for intelligent missions of increasing duration. However, power system development has not kept pace with the advancves that have been made in UUV electronic systems. At the moment the most effective performance has been achieved using silver-zinc secondary batteries but it is claimed that a Stirling engine system could easily out-perform such a system. In order to design an underwater power system, the vehicles mission (speed-time) profile msut be specified so that the maximum power and energy storage requirements can be determined. Then the design of the energy convertor system can then be attempted. A major problem encountered in the power system selection and design processes is the space packaging requirements. For example, a particular engine may meet the power specifications but the complete engine-energy source system may not fit into the space allocated. It may also be found that system can meet the mission and payload requirements. To enable a designer to rapidly assess the suitability of a Stirling powered systems to meet the mission profile and packaging needs of a particular UUV application, computer based algorithms has been developed and in this paper the structure and the use of these software packages is discussed.


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    Title :

    Computer aided techniques for the preliminary design of stirling engines for use in unmanned underwater vehicles


    Additional title:

    Computergestützte Methoden für die Vorabbestimmung der Konstruktionsmerkmale von Stirlingmotoren für den Einsatz in fahrerlosen Unterwasserfahrzeugen


    Contributors:
    Reader, G.T. (author) / Potter, I.J. (author) / Rostron, D.W. (author) / Hawley, J.G. (author)


    Publication date :

    1993


    Size :

    6 Seiten, 1 Bild, 2 Tabellen, 5 Quellen


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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