A highly mobile ducted underwater robot for subsea infrastructure inspection

摘要

With the repaid development of different kinds of offshore structures, there is a great need for the frequent inspection of them. Underwater robot is very qualified of these tasks especially on such occasions that cost and risk are the critical factors. However, the inefficient maneuvering of those traditional underwater robots at low speed makes it unsuitable for thorough inspection tasks as well as tasks in restricted areas which require the robot frequent change its orientation when it is slow even still. In this paper, a new concept underwater robot is proposed. The robot is composed of a propeller for propulsion, a pair of counter rotating rudders to neutralize the reverse torque of the propeller, four steering rudders for the maneuvering of the robot and a pressure hull to encapsulate power and control system. The structural design and motion principle of the robot is given in detail. The kinematic and the dynamic equations of the robot are established. The flow field of the robot is also analyzed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique.