Design of an underwater data acquisition system for measuring submarine performance

The paper details the design of a data acquisition system for evaluating blade and shaft designs of a propulsion system for a human powered submarine. The objectives of the design were to sample and store data representing several analog signals and the time of measurement, and to display velocity and shaft rpm for the submarine operator in real-time. The sampled parameters are then used to calculate the submarine´s performance in terms of velocity, thrust shaft torque and rpm. Several parameters are displayed in real-time to aid the submarine operator with training. System design restrictions including size, power requirements, heat dissipation, data integrity, and others had to be considered. Since the data acquisition system is a completely portable system, if is possible to incorporate the system into other applications