A Study On Torque Balancing Propellers For Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is one kind of the most important facilities in ocean exploitation and research. With the development of the AUV, it should cruise further, submerge deeper and be smaller. Therefore, the propeller designers must take characteristics of AUVs into consideration when they work. In this thesis the main task is using a certain AUV as an object to do some research on the theoretical design of the AUV propeller.Some of AUVs have small transverse scales, which are the same scale level as their propeller diameters. The torque generated by the rotating propeller has an adverse effect on the motion of the AUV. Accordingly, this adverse effect must be considered during the propeller design work. To solve this problem, the author presents an integrated torque balancing thruster based on the surface panel method theory. As to the thruster, a protecting duct and its brackets are used to generate anti-torque which can balance the propeller torque. Then the adverse impact upon the AUV is eliminated. In the thesis, the author presents the calculating method of hydrodynamic characteristics of the thruster based on the surface panel method theory, the elements of torque balancing and the theoretic design method of the thruster. The author also designs an integrated torque balancing thruster for a certain AUV and then discusses the choice of some design parameters.