Investigation of water entry impact forces on airborne-launched AUVs. Issue 1 (1st January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Qi, Duo; Feng, Jinfu; Xu, Baowei; Zhang, Jiaqiang; Li, Yongli
• Is Part Of: Engineering applications of computational fluid mechanics. Volume 10:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 473
• Page End: 484
• Publication Date: 2016-01-01
• Subjects: Airborne-launched AUV -- water entry -- impact force -- experimental study -- numerical simulation; Computational fluid dynamics -- Periodicals; 620.10640285
• DOI: 10.1080/19942060.2016.1202864
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1994-2060

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Airborne-launched AUVs withstand great fluid impact force at the early stage when entering the water, which may cause damage to their structure and inner components in severe cases. Due to their large volume and mass, the major challenge involved in conducting experiments to measure the water entry impacts on real-life AUVs is the high demand for the experimental devices, finding a suitable site, and the cost of the experiments. Using a gas gun as launching device, water entry experiments using a full-size AUV model are conducted under various conditions. The axial and radial force changes that occur during the water entry process are obtained, and some accompanied phenomena such as cavitation and turnover under different water entry conditions are observed. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to simulate the water entry process of airborne-launched AUVs. The simulation results fit well with the experimental data, the latter of which show that both the water entry velocity and entry angle have a great influence on the impact load during the water entry process. These data can provide valuable reference information for AUV structure design and launch condition selection.