Ocean Engineering Senior Design Final Review

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Group Three

Autonomous Anchoring Surface Vessel

 

Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) often perform operations away from any dock, when needing to maintain position for a certain amount of time.  In the presence of high winds and/or strong currents, the station keeping capability is time-limited due to the finite amount of energy stored in the batteries.  Anchoring an ASV seems to be the logical approach to solve this issue.  However, anchoring and retrieving an anchor is a challenging process for an autonomous device, both in terms of operations and in terms of instant power requirements.  This is especially true when the station keeping must be accurate, which leads to three-point anchoring. Here, the students shall design and implement an ASV capable of deploying a single anchor in the presence of current, perform station keeping for a fixed amount of time and retrieve the anchor.

System Level of Requirements:

  1. The group shall design and implement an Ocean Current Energy Converter easily mountable on an ASV and capable of producing 50 [W] of average power over a period of 2 hours.  The unit shall be easily removable from the ASV.  Finally, the unit shall have the proper outlet to recharge a drone-like payload installed on the ASV.  The group shall carefully consider the possibility of ducting the water flow in an effort to generate sufficient power.  The design shall handle current coming from any direction.  The current speed shall not exceed 0.5 [m/s] in any direction.  The ASV would be provided by the Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering.
  2. Requirement 1 + the unit shall be designed so that it can be manually moved in and out of the water after and before ASV transit.
  3. Requirement 2 + the unit shall be designed so that it can be automatically moved in and out of the water after and before ASV transit.

Operating Requirements:

  • Mountable on the WAMV-16.
  • Diver-less operations.

Presentation & Forms:

Click here to download group three's PowerPoint presentation 

Click here for group three's evaluation form 

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