Designing an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle hull shape with Direct Approach

Hydrodynamic design of the exterior hull shape is a main step of body shape design. The effective parameters in this process include the length of the nose and tail, the blunt sections of nose and tail as well as the profiles of the nose and the tail. In the present study to investigate the effect of each of these parameters on the drag coefficient of the body, Design of Experiments (DOE) method is used. For this purpose, by introducing the Hydrolab family profiles, the results of numerical simulation of flow around the Hydrolab500 body was applied to design of experiments. In the first phase, a sample experiments in water tunnel was conducted to validate the pressure profile around Hydrolab500 body. Comparing experimental and numerical results shows the validity of the employed numerical methods. The results of the current work shows that by presented method the drag coefficient of an AUV in the final design can be estimated with high accuracy.