• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.995-1006
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• 2015

Underwater glider, as a new kind of autonomous underwater vehicles, has many merits such as long-range, extended-duration and low costs. The shape of underwater glider is an important factor in determining the hydrodynamic efficiency. In this paper, a high lift to drag ratio configuration, the Blended-Wing-Body (BWB), is used to design a small civilian under water glider. In the parametric geometric model of the BWB underwater glider, the planform is defined with Bezier curve and linear line, and the section is defined with symmetrical airfoil NACA 0012. Computational investigations are carried out to study the hydrodynamic performance of the glider using the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code Fluent. The Kriging-based genetic algorithm, called Efficient Global Optimization (EGO), is applied to hydrodynamic design optimization. The result demonstrates that the BWB underwater glider has excellent hydrodynamic performance, and the lift to drag ratio of initial design is increased by 7% in the EGO process.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.435-449
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• 2020

This paper proposes a method to estimate the underwater target object's yaw angle using a sonar image. A simulator modeling imaging mechanism of a sonar sensor and a generative adversarial network for style transfer generates realistic template images of the target object by predicting shapes according to the viewing angles. Then, the target object's yaw angle can be estimated by comparing the template images and a shape taken in real sonar images. We verified the proposed method by conducting water tank experiments. The proposed method was also applied to AUV in field experiments. The proposed method, which provides bearing information between underwater objects and the sonar sensor, can be applied to algorithms such as underwater localization or multi-view-based underwater object recognition.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.1189-1198
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• 2021

When performing remote tasks using robots in nuclear power plants, a 3D shape measurement system is advantageous in improving the efficiency of remote operations by easily identifying the current state of the target object for example, size, shape, and distance information. Nuclear power plants have high-radiation and underwater environments therefore the electronic parts that comprise 3D shape measurement systems are prone to degradation and thus cannot be used for a long period of time. Also, given the refraction caused by a medium change in the underwater environment, optical design constraints and calibration methods for them are required. The present study proposed a method for developing an underwater 3D shape measurement system with improved radiation tolerance, which is composed of commercial electric parts and a stereo camera while being capable of easily and readily correcting underwater refraction. In an effort to improve its radiation tolerance, the number of parts that are exposed to a radiation environment was minimized to include only necessary components, such as a line beam laser, a motor to rotate the line beam laser, and a stereo camera. Given that a signal processing circuit and control circuit of the camera is susceptible to radiation, an image sensor and lens of the camera were separated from its main body to improve radiation tolerance. The prototype developed in the present study was made of commercial electric parts, and thus it was possible to improve the overall radiation tolerance at a relatively low cost. Also, it was easy to manufacture because there are few constraints for optical design.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.214-224
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• 2021

Recently, as the technology of the supercavitating underwater vehicle is improved, the necessity of research for maneuvering characteristics of the supercavitating underwater vehicle has emerged. In this study, as a preliminary step to analyzing the maneuverability of a supercavitating underwater vehicle, the characteristics of cavity shapes and hydrodynamic forces generated in a supercavitating underwater vehicle with an angle of attack were evaluated numerically. First, the geometry was designed by modifying the shape of the existing supercavitating underwater vehicle. The continuity and the Navier-stokes equations are numerically solved, and turbulent eddy viscosity is solved by the k-ω SST model. The results present the characteristics of cavity shape and the hydrodynamic forces of the designed geometry with an angle of attack.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 1986

Schooling behavier to a fishing gear and estimation of the volume of fish school in set net have ~ been studied by making use of such techniques as visual observations, underwater cameras, under- water televison. However, all of these observation techniques are subject to restrictions caused by illumination, underwater visibility, underwater transparent and sea conditions. For the above mentioned reasoa, one of the most effective method by this time become generally known a method using fish finder. In this paper, in order to control the fishing ground of set net effectively and to develope the telemetric fish finder, the experiments for the target strength, underwater shape of fishing gear, schooling behavier and volume of fish school with fish finder were performed at Galgott fishing ground of set net located Keouje Island, 15th-24th July and 18th-20th October in 1985. The results of these experiment showed that a method using fish finder in fishing grOlllld of set net is available for estimating distribution and school size, fish behavier in relation to a fishing gear and underwater shape of fishing gears.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.693-704
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• 2017

Blended-Wing-Body Underwater Glider (BWBUG), which has excellent hydrodynamic performance, is a new kind of underwater glider in recent years. In the shape optimization of BWBUG, the lift to drag ratio is often used as the optimization target. However this results in lose of internal space. In this paper, the energy reserve is defined as the direct proportional function of the internal space of BWBUG. A motion model, which relates gliding range to steady gliding motion parameters as well as energy consumption, is established by analyzing the steady-state gliding motion. The maximum gliding range is used as the optimization target instead of the lift to drag ratio to optimizing the shape of BWBUG. The result of optimization shows that the maximum gliding range of initial design is increased by 32.1% though an Efficient Global Optimization (EGO) process.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.455-467
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• 2020

Shape design optimization for Blended-wing-body Underwater Gliders (BWBUGs) is usually computationally expensive. In our previous work, a simplified shape optimization (SSO) strategy is proposed to alleviate the computational burden, which optimizes some of the Sectional Airfoils (SAs) instead of optimizing the 3-D shape of the BWBUG directly. Test results show that SSO can obtain a good result at a much smaller computational cost when three SAs are adopted. In this paper, the performance of SSO is investigated with a different number of SAs selected from the BWBUG, and the results are compared with that of the Direct Shape Optimization (DSO) strategy. Results indicate that SSO tends to perform better with more SAs or even outperforms the DSO strategy in some cases, and the amount of saved computational cost also increases when more SAs are adopted, which provides some reference significance and enlarges the applicability range of SSO.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.91-98
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• 2011

This paper proposes an efficient and accurate vision based recognition and tracking framework for texture free objects. We approached this problem with a two phased algorithm: detection phase and tracking phase. In the detection phase, the algorithm extracts shape context descriptors that used for classifying objects into predetermined interesting targets. Later on, the matching result is further refined by a minimization technique. In the tracking phase, we resorted to meanshift tracking algorithm based on Bhattacharyya coefficient measurement. In summary, the contributions of our methods for the underwater robot vision are four folds: 1) Our method can deal with camera motion and scale changes of objects in underwater environment; 2) It is inexpensive vision based recognition algorithm; 3) The advantage of shape based method compared to a distinct feature point based method (SIFT) in the underwater environment with possible turbidity variation; 4) We made a quantitative comparison of our method with a few other well-known methods. The result is quite promising for the map based underwater SLAM task which is the goal of our research.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.16 no.2 s.107
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• pp.190-197
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• 2006

It is well known that the acoustic characteristics of the sea are significantly affected by bubbles which have their own inherent characteristics at the undersea. In this study, the shape and acoustic characteristics of air bubbles generated by an underwater nozzle are calculated numerically, and are measured with a high speed camera and a hydrophone at various air flow rates in the experimental apparatus. As a result of analysis, the shape calculated numerically well matched with measured values at low flow rates, but in case of relatively higher flow rates. the use of correction coefficient is needed for more accurate estimation of the bubble shape. And also the rising velocity of a single bubble is constant regardless of both the bubble size and the flow rate. and the acoustic signal generated when the bubble is produced by an underwater nozzle has the same characteristic of natural frequency of the bubble pulsation, and is agreed with Minnaert's equation if the correction coefficient is considered in accordance with the flow rate.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.328-334
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• 2019

Underwater architecture in providing a comfortable living space underwater is mandated to survive prevailing environmental loads, especially hydrostatic ambient water pressure exerted on the structure of individual habitat hulls at depth and hydrodynamic fluctuation of external forces that perturb the postural equilibrium and mooring stability of the underwater housing system, for which the design including the hull shape and mooring system constraint the responses. In this study, the postural stability of a proposed underwater floating housing system with three vertically connected ellipsoidal-shape habitat hulls of different sizes are theorized and calculated for hydrostatic stability, using MATLAB in the volumetric integration of a hull and the weight of operational loads under assumed scenarios. The assumptions made in the numerical method to estimate the stability of the habitat system include the fixed weight of the hulls, and their adjustable loads within operational limits for the set meteorological oceanic conditions. The purpose of this study was to numerically manipulate a) The buoyancy and b) The adjusted center of mass of the system within the range of designed external and internal load changes, by which the effective mooring system capability and postural equilibrium requirements were argued with the quantitative analysis.