Numerical Simulation Study on the Effects of Course Keeping on the Roll Stability of Submarine Emergency Rising

Abstract

A direct numerical simulation method based on Reynolds Average Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations is used to carry out numerical prediction studies of submarine emergency rising in this paper. Firstly, a numerical simulation of the nonpropelled model without rudder manipulating is accomplished as the basis of this study. The numerical prediction results are in good agreement with the experimental data, which proves the feasibility and accuracy of the direct numerical simulation method. Meanwhile, both model tests and numerical simulation results reveal the strong coupling effect between roll and yaw motions during the underwater ascending process. Based on the above observation and analysis, another two numerical simulations, whose grids are identical with the non-manipulation simulation, are conducted respectively under the condition of rudder steering, i.e., course keeping simulation and self-propulsion simulation. An optimized S surface controller based on conditional determination is designed to manipulate the rudders. As a result, the yaw angle of the latter two simulations is limited within the range of 0.2° and 0.8° respectively, proving the effectiveness of the S surface controller. Correspondingly, the maximum roll angle is reduced by 96% and 70% respectively, which demonstrates that the roll stability is significantly enhanced by improving the course keeping ability of the model. Moreover, it is also proven from the perspective of reverse verification that, the excessive yaw deviation is the root cause of emergency rising roll instability for the situation of incidence angle lower than 30°.