A Machine Learning Enabled MDO for Bio-Inspired Autonomous Underwater Gliders

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Serani, Andrea, Palma, Giorgio, Wackers, Jeroen, Diez, Matteo
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866911434203463680
author Serani, Andrea
Palma, Giorgio
Wackers, Jeroen
Diez, Matteo
author_facet Serani, Andrea
Palma, Giorgio
Wackers, Jeroen
Diez, Matteo
contents The preliminary design of AUGs is intrinsically challenging due to the strong coupling between the external hydrodynamic shape, the hydrostatic balance, the structural integrity, and internal packaging constraints. This complexity is further amplified for bio-inspired configurations, whose rich geometric parametrizations lead to high-dimensional design spaces that are difficult to explore using conventional optimization approaches. This work presents a ML-enabled bi-level multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) framework for the performance-driven design of a manta-ray-inspired AUG. At the upper level, hydrodynamically efficient external geometries are explored in a reduced design space obtained through physics-driven parametric model embedding, which identifies a low-dimensional latent representation directly correlated with the lift, drag, and pressure distributions. At the lower level, a constrained internal sizing problem determines the minimum feasible empty weight by accounting for structural, hydrostatic, geometric, and payload constraints. To render the resulting bi-level problem computationally tractable, a multi-fidelity surrogate-based optimization strategy is adopted, combining low- and high-fidelity hydrodynamic models with stochastic radial basis function surrogates and adaptive Bayesian sampling. The framework enables efficient exploration of the coupled design space while rigorously managing model uncertainty and computational cost. The optimized configurations exhibit a 14.7\% improvement in maximum hydrodynamic efficiency and a 12.8\% reduction in empty weight relative to the baseline design, while satisfying all disciplinary constraints. These results demonstrate that the integration of physics-driven dimensionality reduction and multi-fidelity machine learning enables scalable and physically consistent MDO of complex bio-inspired underwater vehicles.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_08508
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Machine Learning Enabled MDO for Bio-Inspired Autonomous Underwater Gliders
Serani, Andrea
Palma, Giorgio
Wackers, Jeroen
Diez, Matteo
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Optimization and Control
The preliminary design of AUGs is intrinsically challenging due to the strong coupling between the external hydrodynamic shape, the hydrostatic balance, the structural integrity, and internal packaging constraints. This complexity is further amplified for bio-inspired configurations, whose rich geometric parametrizations lead to high-dimensional design spaces that are difficult to explore using conventional optimization approaches. This work presents a ML-enabled bi-level multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) framework for the performance-driven design of a manta-ray-inspired AUG. At the upper level, hydrodynamically efficient external geometries are explored in a reduced design space obtained through physics-driven parametric model embedding, which identifies a low-dimensional latent representation directly correlated with the lift, drag, and pressure distributions. At the lower level, a constrained internal sizing problem determines the minimum feasible empty weight by accounting for structural, hydrostatic, geometric, and payload constraints. To render the resulting bi-level problem computationally tractable, a multi-fidelity surrogate-based optimization strategy is adopted, combining low- and high-fidelity hydrodynamic models with stochastic radial basis function surrogates and adaptive Bayesian sampling. The framework enables efficient exploration of the coupled design space while rigorously managing model uncertainty and computational cost. The optimized configurations exhibit a 14.7\% improvement in maximum hydrodynamic efficiency and a 12.8\% reduction in empty weight relative to the baseline design, while satisfying all disciplinary constraints. These results demonstrate that the integration of physics-driven dimensionality reduction and multi-fidelity machine learning enables scalable and physically consistent MDO of complex bio-inspired underwater vehicles.
title A Machine Learning Enabled MDO for Bio-Inspired Autonomous Underwater Gliders
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08508