An experimental investigation into the flow behaviour of submersibles.

Abstract

Submarines are relatively complicated machinery that are required to operate in a range of environments and operations. To achieve efficient operations, as well as to maintain a strategic advantage, it is important to focus on the flow around the submarine, especially on the areas where the flow separates from laminar to turbulent regions.

This investigation will focus on establishing a set-up that is able to accommodate the following requirements: the ability to vary the pitch and yaw angles while maintaining a stable model, a method that does not interfere with the flow around the model and allow the dye tubes to be able to be adjusted laterally and vertically. Furthermore, this investigation also aims to use water tunnel experiments to establish the interactions of the flow with the submarine at various combinations of pitch and yaw.

The author concluded that the set-up was able to meet the three requirements. However, a key issue faced was that the dye flow was not consistently stable. Future research and work are needed to ensure this problem is resolved. The author recommends using the same set-up with particle image velocimetry (PIV) instead of dye flow.