High Efficiency Hydraulic System for Battery Powered Hybrid Vehicles

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has developed a family of hybrid battery powered underwater vehicles to readily enable ocean exploration access utilizing a variety of platforms, both piloted and autonomous. These vehicle platforms, constrained by their limited power availability, necessitate the development of innovative subsystems which prioritizes efficiency. To enable use of hydraulic functions aboard hybrid vehicles, WHOI has engineered a Hydraulic Power Unit (HPU) with the goals of optimizing efficiency. Through strategic matching of components, this design was able to achieve its target performance with a 70% ideal efficiency. The HPU has since been successfully tested on the Hybrid Remotely Operated Vehicle (HROV) Nereid Hybrid Tether (NHT) in Panama and deployed on HROV Nereid Under Ice (NUI) under Arctic Sea ice.