Multidisciplinary design optimization of underwater glider for improving endurance

Underwater glider (UG) is widely applied for long-term ocean observation, the gliding range of which is mainly influenced by its design. In this paper, the design parameters that have obvious influence on the gliding range, including the buoyancy factor, compressibility of the pressure hull, hydrodynamic coefficients, and motion parameters, are selected based on the gliding range model of UG. Due to their complicate coupling relationship in the design of the UG, the multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) design framework integrating the collaborative optimization (CO) method and approximate model technology is adopted to optimize the key parameters by taking the gliding range as the optimization target. The results show that the optimization leads to an increase of the gliding range of Petrel-L as much as 83.3% when the hotel load is 0.5 W, which is verified by the sea trial. The optimization is applicable to other types of underwater gliders.