Biologically inspired design of an underwater glider

Gliding miniAUVs should function as navigation system for the exploration of the ocean. To comply this mission, good gliding performance and course stability are needed. As there are no conventional solutions for the size limited design of the miniAUVs, novel designs are determined in a biomimetic technology-pull process, where hydrodynamic partial functions of the miniAUV are identified. A morphological box is created for the collection of biological and technical partial solutions. For verification of the biomimetic design, wind tunnel experiments and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are conducted. Four different design-studies are tested in order to determine their applicability for the given scenario.