Simulating Flood Recovery Manoeuvres Using a Free-Running Submarine Model

Abstract

Managing submarine safety, effectively, requires an understanding of many areas of platform performance, including its ability to manoeuvre. QinetiQ’s free-running submarine model (FRM) capability, the second generation Submarine Research Model (SRMII), forms a key part of the UK’s predictive manoeuvring capability that supports the MoD’s ability to conduct hydrodynamic assessment of the manoeuvring and control performance of the Royal Navy’s current and future submarines. Uniquely for an FRM, the SRMII has a large and capable ballast system. This is able to emulate a flooding incident within a submarine compartment and the subsequent emergency recovery procedures, which may include blowing the submarine’s main ballast tanks. This paper discusses how the SRMII’s ballast system was used to generate model-scale trajectories, which are not obtainable with many other FRMs. The experimental data were used to successfully validate the mathematical model, which predicts the maximum pitch angle response of a full-scale submarine to a compartment flood, to within an average accuracy of 1% at model-scale. However, the range of the non-dimensional flow angles the FRM exhibited was shown to be within that for a full-scale flood trajectory. Therefore, further tests have been proposed to increase the extent of the data in the future.