Free motion characteristics of the ventilated supercavitating vehicles

Abstract

Supercavitation theory and technology are important methods for reducing the drag of underwater vehicles to achieve motion with high speed. A ventilated supercavitating vehicle can break the limitation of natural supercavitation on speed and ambient pressure and has broad application prospects. The presence of hydrodynamic forces only at the head and tail restricts the significant improvement of the motion performance of the vehicle. Therefore, this study improves the dynamic model of a supercavitating vehicle using a self-developed shear-layer gas loss model and simulates the vehicle’s level-free motions to reveal the motion characteristics and hydrodynamic distribution characteristics. Further, the effects of the cavitator as an important control surface on motion characteristics are analyzed by changing the cavitator diameter in numerical simulations. The results lay a theoretical foundation for designing control surfaces and motion control systems for the vehicle.