Design and Development of Power Management System of Unmanned Underwater Platform for Defence Application

Abstract

Development of underwater weapon systems for defence application are carried out on unmanned underwater platform. Extensive testing and measurement of physical parameters are carried out during development phase trials. After several trials, system is qualified and installed on the actual platform. Mostly battery bank is used to power the unmanned platform. Design and development of power management system is an important issue of underwater platform to increase the underwater time of the platform. During development trials some additional equipments are also included for which power requirement was not considered during design of battery bank. This also becomes an issue to manage the power requirement of additional equipment beyond the design capability of the battery bank. Unmanned submersible platforms at a depth of 50 m to 70 m are used during development of underwater missile. Platform houses the missile to be tested, equipment required for missile launch and control of the platform. A power management system (PMS) with redundancy and fault tolerant features achieving reliability figure of 99 per cent has been designed, developed and tested successfully for underwater phase of missile launch. The system allows remote operation of individual or group of equipment, current monitoring, and isolation of faulty equipment. Power requirement for additional equipment on platform is also included in PMS without affecting the reliability of the system. Power control of equipment on requirement basis to save battery power, to increase underwater time of platform and to manage additional power requirement beyond the designed capacity of the battery bank is described in detail.