Numerical investigation of the scale effect on the horizontal maneuvering derivatives of an underwater vehicle

Abstract

This paper presents the effects of different scales on non-dimensional horizontal hydrodynamic derivatives of a generic underwater vehicle, DARPA Suboff. Thus, three different scales are created for fully appended submarine form. A numerical viscous solver is utilized to model the Planar Motion Mechanism (PMM) technique, numerically. Before presenting the scale effect, the numerical model is verified and validated with an appropriate method and available experimental data. Firstly, the sway forces and yaw moments are obtained under different scenarios, then the linear horizontal maneuvering derivatives of each scale are calculated and compared with each other. It is found that the sway forces obtained from pure yaw analyses are remarkably affected by the scale, while sway forces obtained from pure sway analyses are not affected reasonably. Yaw moment values are affected remarkably in neither pure sway nor pure yaw analyses. The scale effect appears also in a similar way in the linear maneuvering coefficients.