Research on hydrodynamic characteristics of supercavitating vehicle's fin stabilizer

Abstract

Supercavitation technology has been proven and applied to many underwater vehicles to reduce friction and improve the speed. Because most of the friction of the small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) is derived from the underwater floating body, and the floating body of SWATH has a similar shape to the underwater vehicle. So it is feasible to apply the supercavitation technology to the floating body of SWATH. However, unlike most underwater vehicles, there are more appendages on the floating body. In particular, fin stabilizer, only part of the fins contact the water, the rest is wrapped in a cavity. Therefore, the hydrodynamic characteristics of fin stabilizer have changed. In this paper, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software is used to simulate the hydrodynamic forces of the fin stabilizer on the SWATH floating body at different speeds and different angles of attack. Finally, according to the simulation results, the influence of the supercavitation on fin stabilizer is analyzed.