Mechanical design consideration of an Underwater Inflatable Co-prime Sonar Array (UICSA)

Inflatable structures offer advantages such as lightweight, compact, and cost-efficient. As such, underwater inflatable structures (UISs) can be advantageous in many marine applications. The UISs are initially folded into a compact package which is dropped from the surface of the ocean to reach an underwater destination and morph into its inflated form. Relying on UISs, we've designed an Underwater Inflatable Co-prime Sonar Array (UICSA) prototype. In this paper, we investigate the physical design of the UISs to support the UICSA. A UICSA prototype is constructed to evaluate the morphing performance and deployment procedures. The experiments results and the design considerations are presented.