An improved body force method for simulation of self-propulsion AUV with ducted propeller

The body force method (BFM) is an efficient computational method used for maneuvering simulations of marine vehicles with ordinary propellers. In this paper, an improved BFM is proposed to perform maneuvering simulations of a self-propelled AUV with a ducted propeller. Initially, the conventional BFM is applied to numerically investigate the open water performance of a ducted propeller(No. 19A+Ka4-70). However, significant prediction errors have been observed, which were mainly caused due to ignorance of the interaction between the duct and the propeller. To increase the prediction accuracy, an improved BFM is proposed to perform maneuvering simulations of the ducted propeller AUV by considering the mass flow correction. In addition, the external diameter of the actuator is proposed to be a function of real-time advance velocity. To investigate the efficacy of the proposed method, the simulated results have been compared with the model testing carried out in a towing tank and with the discretized propeller method. The proposed improved BFM is used to simulate the 20 degrees /20 degrees zigzag tests of AUV in both vertical and horizontal planes with different advance speeds. Simulated results, particularly propeller thrust, advance speed, pitch (or yaw), resistance, and especially duct thrust of AUV have significantly improved as compared to the conventional BFM. The improved BFM results were found in close agreement with discretized propeller method and thus, the proposed method is considered a highly efficient and computationally cost-effective method to perform maneuvering simulations of ducted-propeller marine vehicles. The present work can contribute to the fast optimization of the manoeuvrability of marine vehicles with ducted propeller.