The Navy's plan to launch and retrieve Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUVs) from submarines will require precise control of the UUV when it is in close proximity to the submarine hull. The hydrodynamic forces experienced by the UUV when it is near the submarine are significantly different from those it experiences when it is far away. In order to design a successful control system for the UJV, therefore, a method is needed that can predict these hydrodynamic forces then the two bodies are close together. The objective of the proposed effort is to develop a capability to predict the hydrodynamic loads and trajectories of a UUV and submarine while operating in close proximity and possibly colliding with each other. The basis of the proposed effort would be an existing unsteady computer code, USAERO, which already has a very general capability for computing flows about multiple body configurations in arbitrary motion. Under the Phase I effort, the program was extended to treat multiple bodies in free motion and a module was added to treat non-destructive collision and rebound. Under the Proposed Phase II effort, further improvements would be made that will increase the utility of the code and productionize the method for analysis and design of marine vehicles operating in close proximity to one another.
