The flexible transmission shaft and wheel propeller are combined as the kinetic source equipment, which realizes the nmlti-motion modes of the autonomous underwater vehicle （AUV） such as vectored thruster and wheeled movement. In order to study the interactional principle between the hull and the wheel propellers while the AUV navigating in water, the computational fluid dynamics （CFD） method is used to simulate numerically the unsteady viscous flow around AUV with propellers by using the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes （RANS） equations, shear-stress transport （SST） k-w model and pressure with splitting of operators （PISO） algorithm based on sliding mesh. The hydrodynamic parameters of AUV with propellers such as resistance, pressure and velocity are got, which reflect well the real ambient flow field of AUV with propellers. Then, the semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations （SIMPLE） algorithm is used to compute the steady viscous flow field of AUV hull and propellers, respectively. The computational results agree well with the experimental data, which shows that the numerical method has good accuracy in the prediction of hydrodynamic performance. The interaction between AUV hull and wheel propellers is predicted qualitatively and quantitatively by comparing the hydrodynamic parameters such as resistance, pressure and velocity with those from integral computation and partial computation of the viscous flow around AUV with propellers, which provides an effective reference to the shady on noise and vibration of AUV hull and propellers in real environment. It also provides technical support for the design of new AUVs.
The mobility of the vectored thruster AUV in different environment is the important premise of control system design. The new type of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with rudders and vectored thrusters which are combined to control the course is studied. Firstly, Euler angles representation and quaternion method are applied to establish six-DOF kinematic model respectively, then Newton second law and Lagrangian approach are used to deduce the vectored thruster AUV’s nonlinear dynamic equations with six degrees of freedom (DOF) respectively in complex sea conditions based on the random wave theory according to the structural and kinetic characteristics of the vectored thruster AUV in this paper. The kinematic models and dynamic models based on different theories have the same expression and conclusion, which shows that the kinematic models and dynamic models of the vectored thruster AUV are accurate. The Runge-Kutta arithmetic is used to solve the dynamic equations, which not only can simulate the motions such as cruise and hover but also can describe the vehicle’s low-frequency and high-frequency motion. The results of computation show that the mobility of the vectored thruster AUV in interference-free environment and the integrated signals including low-frequency motion signal and high-frequency motion signal in environmental disturbance accord with practical situation, which not only solve the problem of especial singularities when the pitch angle θ = ±90° but also clears up the difficulties of computation and display of the coupled nonlinear motion equations in complex sea conditions. Moreover, the high maneuverability of the vectored thruster AUV equipped with rudders and vectored thrusters is validated, which lays a foundation for the control system design.
