Experimental Investigation of the vortical Flow around an Underwater Vehicle

The flow field around the axisymmetric streamlined bodies which forms the main body of the airplanes and submarines has been the subject of several researches. The Underwater vehicles yawed to freestream flow, like submarines in a turning maneuver, produce large vortical separated regions. This vortical flow affects acoustic and non-acoustic stealth, body drag, control effectiveness and maneuverability. A suitable way to reduce the effects of this separated flow is to use vortex generators. The main goal of the present study is to investigate the flow field around a standard underwater model employing the vortex generator by using the oil flow visualization method in 0°≤ α ≤30° angles of attack. The novelty of the this study is the application of oil flow visualizing method which can help us to precisely study the structure of three-dimensional vortical flow field. Here, the size of vortices and the location of separation region along the model at different angles of attack are obtained by using the oil flow visualization results and some conclusions are made.

Keywords:

Submarine model , Vortex Generator , Flow visualization , Wind tunnel.