Dynamics Modeling of a Wave Glider With Optimal Wing Structure

Abstract

The wave glider is a new concept marine robot that can make use of wave energy to obtain thrust. Differ from the traditional unmanned vehicle, the wave glider consists of the floating body, the connecting tether, and the submerge glider. It can be regarded as a special catamaran structure. Therefore, the conventional kinetic models of the unmanned vehicle are inapplicable to the wave glider. In this paper, we propose a non-linear kinetic model of wave glider of six degrees of freedom based on three reference coordinate frames. The calculating formula between the vertical liquid velocity and the system advance speed is derived by using the kinetic model. A method to design a glider wing structure under fixed wave speed in vertical direction was also presented. On the basis of the static stress analysis of the Glider wings, we compare different factors influencing the advance speed and optimize them by comparing the simulation results with the calculation results.

Keywords

• Wave glider
• kinetic model
• marine vehicles
• catamaran structure