A Novel Passive Flow Control Method for Underwater Vehicles

Abstract

From several years underwater vehicles have been used in marine sciences, and are being widely used in commercial, military and several other applications. Their ability to work unconventionally makes them suitable to investigate excessive environments, from the world’s inmost hydrothermal vent to regions below polar ice sheet. To explore the large sea section and to find out different resources present in sea, these vehicles play a vital role. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) shape should be selected such that it suffers least drag while traversing in the sea. Present work is to propose a better shape by comparing different shapes considering constant enclosed volume. A 3D model is created using a software tool and simulations are carried out in CFD analysis platform, FLUENT, to estimate drag. A novel passive flow control method to reduce drag is also proposed.