Marine propulsion for hybrid underwater vehicle

Featured in iDP Project Showcase 2020

Project Motivation

This project aims to design a maritime propulsion for a Hybrid Underwater Vehicle (HUV) since existing products in the market have been unable to deliver a compact size yet offer a desirable thruster to power consumption ratio.

Design Solution

To facilitate the development of the propulsion device, the project is segmented into 3 stages:

  1. Selection on the off-the-shelf motor and design of propellers and duct
  2. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Simulation using ANSYS Fluent
    1. CFD simulation on propellers
    2. CFD simulation on the nozzle
  3. Experimental validation
    1. Modification Propulsion Testing Jig
    2. Data collection

Bumblebee: Marine Propulsion for Hybrid Underwater Vehicle
Prototype of propulsion device

Project Team

Student:

  • Jonatan Colim (Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2020)

Supervisor:

  • Dr Koh Chan Yang, Edwin