Modeling of a complex-shaped underwater vehicle

Abstract

A control-oriented modeling approach is proposed for a low-speed semi-AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) CISCREA, which has complex-shaped structures. Due to the geometry of this AUV, it is very difficult to identify its dynamic and hydrodynamic parameters. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to find an efficient modeling approach to tune acceptable control design models. The presented solution uses cost efficient CFD (computational fluid dynamic) softwares predicting the two hydrodynamic key parameters: The added mass matrix and the damping matrix. A complete model is built for CISCREA from CFD and verified through experimental results. The results indicate that the proposed computational approach seems to be desirable for the robust control scheme of many complex-shaped AUVs. Finally, Numerical and experimental results are compared.