Author(s)

João Victor Nunes de Sousa^1*, Antonio Gilson Barbosa de Lima¹, Francisco Alves Batista², Edna Cordeiro de Souza³, Daniel César de Macedo Cavalcante⁴, Paulo de Morais Pessôa¹, João Evangelista Franco do Carmo¹

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, Brazil.
²Department of Physics, State University of Paraíba, Campina Grande, Brazil.
³Department of Physics and Mathematical, Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, Brazil.
⁴Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the Sertao Pernambucano, Serra Talhada, Brazil.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV’s) are considered as advanced classes of vehicles, capable of performing pre-established missions without physical communication with the ground or human assistance. The research and development of this type of vehicles have been motivated, due to its excellent characteristics, ideal to the military, scientific and industrial sectors. Thus, the objective of this paper is to study fluid flow behavior past over AUV’s, without and with control surfaces (rudders), by Computational Fluid-Dynamics (CFD), aiming to obtain information about the impact of the operating depth and control surfaces on the vehicle's hydrodynamics, in order to help researchers and designers of this class of vehicles. Results of the drag coefficient, pressure, velocity and streamlines distribution around the vehicles are presented and analyzed.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Fluid Flow, Computational Fluid-Dynamics, Drag Coefficient

de Sousa, J. , de Lima, A. , Batista, F. , de Souza, E. , de Macedo Cavalcante, D. , de Morais Pessôa, P. and do Carmo, J. (2020) On the Study of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles by Computational Fluid-Dynamics. Open Journal of Fluid Dynamics, 10, 63-81. doi: 10.4236/ojfd.2020.101005.