Evaluation methodology for AUV energy systems analysis

An evaluation methodology is developed and applied to the analysis of heat engines, primary and secondary batteries, and fuel cells in an effort to evaluate energy systems for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The evaluation methodology reduced the number of independent variables to four, while the balance of 11 variables were shown to be dependent on the former. This generic method permits the range of candidate energy systems to be evaluated from the vehicle system point of view. The method shows why fuel cells win over all the heat engines or batteries in the trade off competition for the long-range, volume-limited AUV case. The most important independent variable is fuel rate or brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), in kg/kWh