Computational fluid dynamic study on design and modification of underwater remotely operated vehicle

Abstract

Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) has been widely used in numerous underwater exploration applications such as exploration of complex deep sea environment, pipeline detection, installation, maintenance, and repair. Thus, it is worthy to design, optimize, and performance evaluation of ROV systems for underwater exploration purposes. Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) is a computational approach that is very helpful and widely used to examine the flow characteristics of ROV systems. In this research work, CFD analyses of ROV bodies with different thruster blades were carried out in order to generate thrust forces by the thruster blades. For this purpose, ANSYS FLUENT was used to examine the flow characteristics over the ROV body. The analyses were performed at different flow velocities, such as 1 m/s, 1.5 m/s, 2 m/s, 2.5 m/s, 3 m/s and 3.5 m/s. The outcomes were in the form of thrust force, drag force, pressure distribution, and velocity distribution. The result shows that four-blade thruster generates maximum thrust force as compare to other ROV thruster models. The main reason behind this higher thrust force is due to the larger motion of the fluid. Similarly, drag force was also investigated and observed that the drag force is greater for thruster model 3, having four blades due to the large frontal area of the ROV body and thruster blades. The results obtained in this study are very helpful for engineers and researchers to design and optimize ROV models using numerical methods.