CFD analysis of the hull form of a manned submersible forminimizing resistance (Jun, 10.1007/s40722-022-00232-3, 2022)

A manned submersible is an underwater vehicle that is capable of operating independently. During the design process, estimating resistance and power is key to choosing the right propeller. The shape improvement of the manned submersible has a significant impact on the submersible's energy utilization and endurance. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), it is possible to accurately calculate the forces acting on manned submersibles. A CFD flow analysis framework has been formulated and the process applied to circular bodies of different lengths. To validate the results of the numerical analysis, the results are compared with experimental results available in the literature. The validated CFD framework was used to conduct the flow analysis on manned submersibles of different sizes and shapes to minimize the resistance. The optimized shape resistance is further utilized for thruster selection and to estimate the descent speed, ascent speed, descent time and ascent time for a 6000 m rated vehicle. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.