Abstract
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have various applications in both military and civilian fields. A wider operation area and more complex tasks require better overall range performance of AUVs. However, until recently, there have been few unified criteria for evaluating the range performance of AUVs. In the present work, a unified range index, i.e., L*, considering the cruising speed, the sailing distance, and the volume of an AUV, is proposed for the first time, which can overcome the shortcomings of previous criteria using merely one single parameter, and provide a uniform criterion for the overall range performance of various AUVs. After constructing the expression of the L* index, the relevant data of 49 AUVs from 12 countries worldwide have been collected, and the characteristics of the L* range index in different countries and different categories were compared and discussed. Furthermore, by analyzing the complex factors affecting the range index, methods to enhance the L* range index value, such as efficiency enhancement and drag reduction, have been introduced and discussed. Under this condition, the work proposes a unified and scientific criterion for evaluating the range performance of AUVs for the first time, provides valuable theoretical insight for the development of AUVs with higher performance, and then arouses more attention to the application of the cutting-edge superlubricity technology to the field of underwater vehicles, which might greatly help to accelerate the coming of the era of the superlubricitive engineering.
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The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. The author Jianbin LUO is the Editor-in-Chief of this journal. The author Liran MA is the Youth Editorial Board Member of this journal.
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Manfu ZHU. She received her bachelor’s degree in School of Mechanical Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology, China in 2019. She is now a Ph.D. candidate at the State Key Laboratory of Tribology in Advanced Equipment, Tsinghua University, China. Her research interests include propeller performance optimization and surface & interface properties modification.
Liran MA. She received her Ph.D. in 2010 from Tsinghua University, China. Following a postdoctoral period at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, she is now working as an associate professor in State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University. She was elected as the Young Chang Jiang Scholar in 2015. Her current research interests are tribology and surface & interface science. She has published over 100 SCI papers with more than 1,000 citations.
Jianbin LUO. He received his bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University, China, in 1982, and got his master’s degree from Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, China, in 1988. In 1994, he received his Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University, China, and then joined the faculty of Tsinghua University. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Yangtze River Scholar Distinguished Professor. He was awarded the STLE International Award (2013), the Chinese National Technology Progress Prize (2008), the Chinese National Natural Science Prize (2001), and the Chinese National Invention Prize (1996). He has been engaged in the research of thin film lubrication, superlubricity, and tribology in nanomanufacturing. He was invited as a keynote or plenary speaker for more than 20 times on the international conferences.
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Zhu, M., Ma, L. & Luo, J. L*—An index for evaluating long range performance of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Friction 12, 2205–2221 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-023-0842-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-023-0842-7