Cable Dynamics for Tethered Underwater Vehicles

摘要

The dynamics of tethered underwater vehicles are affected significantly by the presence of the tether, particularly in deep water when the mass and drag of the cable are comparable, or even much larger than the drag and inertia of the vehicle itself. A numerical scheme is provided herein to study the dynamics of tethered vehicles, which exploits a variety of previous findings in cable dynamics to simplify the governing equations without affecting noticeably the accuracy of the solution. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's vehicles, such as ARGO and JASON, are used as example cases and full scale results confirm the validity of the numerical predictions.