Abstract
This paper conducts a numerical investigation on the hydrodynamic performance of a portable autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The portable AUV is designed to cruise and perform some tasks autonomously in the underwater world. However, its dynamic performance is strongly affected by hydrodynamic effects. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the hydrodynamic performance of the portable AUV for its accurate dynamic modeling and control. In this work, based on the designed portable AUV, a comprehensive hydrodynamic performance investigation was conducted by adopting the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. Firstly, the mechanical structure of the portable AUV was briefly introduced, and the dynamic model of the AUV, including the hydrodynamic term, was established. Then, the unknown hydrodynamic coefficients in the dynamic model were estimated through the towing experiment and the plane-motion-mechanism (PMM) experiment simulation. In addition, considering that the portable AUV was affected by wave forces when cruising near the water surface, the influence of surface waves on the hydrodynamic performance of the AUV under different wave conditions and submerged depths was analyzed. Finally, the effectiveness of our method was verified by experiments on the standard models, and a physical experiment platform was built in this work to facilitate hydrodynamic performance investigations of some portable small-size AUVs.
Highlights
More than 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water in the form of oceans, lakes, and rivers [1]
Our work focused on the numerical investigation of the hydrodynamic performance of a novel designed autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) by adopting the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method
Based on the equations of motion of the AUV, all unknown hydrodynamic coefficients were numerically estimated by different experimental simulations of the AUV in the underwater environment with the CFD method
Summary
More than 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water in the form of oceans, lakes, and rivers [1]. Jagadeesh et al [13] presented a towing tank-based experimental investigation on forces and moment on AUV hull form in the vertical plane with a 1:2 AUV model of the standard hull form afterbody It provided guidance experiments on the AUV to study the variation of axial, normal, drag, lift, and pitch moment coefficients with Reynolds number and angle of attack. PMM tests are very popular among experiment-based methods, the measured data from these tests are not entirely reliable because of experimental difficulties and errors involved, preventing further development of these methods Another method to estimate the hydrodynamic coefficients of AUVs is the ASE method, which relies on empirical findings and analytic expressions [10]. The ASE estimates are obtained using physical concepts and empirical results collected for typical geometries adopted in underwater vehicles They provide essential reference values to assess magnitudes and signals for most hydrodynamic coefficients produced by system identification methods
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