CFD simulation of cooperative AUV motion

Abstract

Cooperative AUV performance and efficiency is directly related to its power efficiency. The power consumption for this type of underwater vehicle is influenced by its motion needed because most of the power is spent for thruster to produce thrust. Drag force is known as main contribution to resist the body motion. In this paper, the behavior of this force is study by using Computational fluid dynamic approach (CFD). Two position arrangement of cooperative AUV was chosen to study the drag variation. First, the distance effect between two AUV was studied to represent the basic position arrangement of cooperative AUV. second position arrangement is studied to look at the effect of different position arrangement. The comparison between distance and position arrangement was discuss in detail in this paper. The study show that the distance behind the leading AUV does not give much effect to drag force, but the position arrangement show significant important to drag force.