Numerical evaluation of the hydrodynamic impact characteristics of the air launched AUV upon water entry

Abstract

In this paper, water entry process of air launched AUV is investigated by employing fully coupled finite element method and arbitrary Lagrange–Euler formulation (FEM-ALE) and using penalty coupling technique. Numerical model is established to describe the hydrodynamic characteristics and flow patterns of a high-speed water entry AUV. The effectiveness and accuracy of the numerical simulation are verified quantitatively by the experiments of the earlier study. Selection of suitable advection method and mesh convergence study is carried out during experimental validation process. It is found that appropriate mesh size of impact domain is crucial for numerical simulations and second-order Van Leer advection method is more appropriate for high speed water entry problems. Subsequently, the arbitrary Lagrange–Euler (ALE) algorithm is used to describe the variation laws of the impact load characteristics with water entry velocities, water entry angles and different AUV masses. Dimensionless impact coefficient of AUV at different velocities calculated using ALE method is compared with SPH results. This reveals that ALE method can also simulate the water entry process accurately with less computational cost. This research work can provide beneficial reference information for structure design of AUV and for selection of the water entry parameters.