Energy Saving Green System

Hydrofoil System

For an electric boat, the resistance performance is critical to the energy consumption and operation capability in terms of range and duration. Hydrofoils thus become a hot topic in conjunction with electric propulsion. They act like wings underwater, producing a lift force analogous to that on an aircraft wing. This lift force pushes the boat hull out of the water, greatly reduces resistance, and allows the boat to achieve higher speed with much less energy. The recent advances in carbon fiber composite materials, especially in their strength to stiffness ratio, also increase the popularity of the hydrofoils. Obviously, the hydrofoil electric boats could achieve much better performance than that of conventional boats, and will occupy the high-end position in green boats market.

The actual hydrofoil performance is dependent on both the system design and system control. Through the system design, the hydrofoil parameters including the foil shape and foil size must be optimized to ensure the required lift force and minimized resistance at specified foiling speed. The flight control system must be developed and implemented to maintain the required ride height and boat attitude by timely adjusting the foil attack angle in response to the environmental disturbances. The navigation control system must be developed and implemented to maintain or change the course as required by simultaneous manipulation of the propellers and foils. The successful system control must be achieved by seamless integration of flight control system, navigation control system, and additional powertrain control system to ensure the safety and comfort of hydrofoil boats.  

In actual operation, the hydrofoil control system receives target speed and heading angle from the operation panel, or directly from the throttle and steering of the joystick. Online processing of the sensor data is performed to obtain the actual attitude and speed of the boat. Based on the feedback controller and optimal lift distribution, the real-time commands of hydrofoil angle, propeller speed and rudder angle are generated and sent to the actuators, which maintains the dynamic stability of hydrofoil boats in foiling mode.

An invention patent ‘Telescopic Marine Hydrofoil Device’ has been published.