VALIDATION OF SUBMARINE BLOW ALGORITHMS FOR FLOOD RECOVERY

摘要

A flooding incident on a submerged submarine is a significant hazard to safe submarine operations. The primary operator actions to such an incident are to secure the flood (if possible), drive to the surface, increase shaft RPM and blow the Main Ballast Tanks (MBTs). Out of these four actions, blowing MBTs is critical in order to offset the excess mass but is not sufficient alone. This is because factors such as speed and depth can make the difference between a successful recovery or loss of the submarine. Therefore, it is important to have a good understanding of the performance of the MBT blow system of a submarine, in order to be able to be able to provide guidance as to the safe and unsafe areas in which a submarine can operate, if a flooding incident were to occur. This paper describes the work that QinetiQ has undertaken to improve the blow algorithms used for flood recovery simulations of UK Royal Navy submarines. This work included the conduct of a small scale trial blowing high pressure air from a single bottle, similar to those used on a submarine. The trial results are compared with those calculated by various simulation methods in order to assess the suitability of the blow algorithms.