Computational Fluid Dynamics Applied on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

The present paper report on a comparison between experimental obtained data for the drag force acting on a model prototype of the HUGIN 3000 and data obtained from a Computer Aided Analysis of the drag force carried out by CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics). The HUGIN 3000 was developed in the nineties, by Kongsberg Maritime and FFI (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment). The experimental results in this paper, origins from a model test carried out by Marintek. The range of Reynolds number for both the experimental data and the computational results is 2.707×10⁶ to 1.146×10⁷. The agreement between the experimental data and the computed results is good. Particularly for the highest Reynolds numbers, the prediction of drag force by CFD seems to be remarkable good.