Design of Observation Class Remotely Operated Vehicles for an Exploration Operation in Restricted Underwater Channel

Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) are currently one of the practical instruments to complete some human unreachable tasks such as deep-sea exploration, hazardous chemical-contaminated underwater areas, and very tight or narrow underwater channels. A remotely operated vehicle (ROV), one of the UUV categories, plays an important role in several missions and has been an active field of engineering research since its introduction. In this work, the new observation class ROV (OCROV) hull designs are introduced to provide more understanding of drag prediction, improve power management, and prolong the endurance. To represent the restricted underwater channel, the fluid domain duplicated the size of the underground water trunk main in Northern Bangkok with a diameter of 1000mm is focused. The OCROV hull designs are based on a streamlined torpedo-like shape OCROV. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code with Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations is used to calculate total resistance (R[sub.T]), frictional resistance (R[sub.F]), and pressure resistance (R[sub.P]). The results for restricted areas are also compared against free stream (unbounded) conditions to introduce the blockage and its effects.