Physics-Based Means of Computing the Flow Around a Maneuvering Underwater Vehicle

摘要

A physics based method is developed that will lead to a means of accuratelypredicting the forces and moments acting on a maneuvering, self propelled, appended, underwater vehicle and the resulting vehicle motion. This methodology has been developed to replace the traditional correlation based means of predicting the maneuvering characteristics of a submerged vehicle. This new method numerically solves for the fluid dynamics using the three dimensional, time dependent Reynolds averaged Navier Stokes equations on time dependent curvilinear coordinates. While the baseline code used an algebraic turbulence model, the team also investigated the use of two equation turbulence models. The team coupled the fluid dynamics and vehicle dynamics together with a subroutine that solves for the vehicle dynamics at each time step using the six vector equations of Newton's laws of motion and seven additional kinematic relations. The research team performed a substantial number of steady and unsteady computations to validate various elements of the prediction method, improve confidence in the use of the method, and check the feasibility of using the six vector equations of Newton's laws of motion and seven additional kinematic relations.