Design of Circularly Towed Cable-Body Systems

Abstract

Circularly towed cable-body systems can be used to pickup and deliver payloads, provide surveillance, and tow aerial and marine vehicles. To provide a stable operating platform, the body or end mass should have a unique and stable steady state solution with small diameter so that it travels at a much slower speed than the tow vehicle. In this paper, the minimum damping is calculated that ensures the stable single valued steady state solutions as a function of non-dimensional system parameters including cable length and end mass. Steady state solutions are found using the numerical continuation and bifurcation analysis and Galerkin’s method provides the linearized vibration equations that determine stability. Bifurcation analysis is also used to find the minimum achievable end mass radius. A design algorithm is presented and demonstrated using an example.