Design of SILS Architecture for Hydrogen Fuel Cell of Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

Abstract

The demand for longer endurance, greater range and specialised (complex) missions for unmanned underwater vehicles continues to grow. However, traditional battery-based power sources have limited endurance to meet these demands. The limited energy density of current battery systems does not meet the requirements of long-duration operation, so research is underway into power sources that can be used for long periods of time for unmanned underwater vehicles [1]. In particular, hybrid power sources combining underwater hydrogen fuel cells and batteries are being actively researched. Our institute is also working on the application of hybrid power sources to unmanned underwater vehicles. In this paper, a SILS(Software in the Loop Simulation) design for a hybrid power source based on an underwater hydrogen fuel cell is presented as shown in Figure 1. In particular, we are conducting research on SILS to develop a virtual digital platform, and in the future we plan to develop a digital twin by combining it with hardware. This will be used to design an unmanned underwater vehicle based on hydrogen fuel cells.