The use of Computational Fluid Dynamics to Determine the Static Transverse Stability of a Hovercraft

Hovercraft is a special vehicle with lots of unique capabilities. It moves on an air cushion on top of the water surface and does not have any friction with water, which makes it faster than ships, but unfortunately, more vulnerable to external forces, which make it unstable. In fact, hovercraft is extremely potent to lose its stability if it is not designed well. Therefore, stability analysis is crucial to be done before manufacturing a hovercraft. This work uses transient CFD analysis to determine numerically the static transverse stability of a real hovercraft. Computational methods were used to analyze the hovercraft transverse stability with a complex ۳-D geometry and with all details. The methodology employed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based on the Navier-Stokes equation. The ability of a hovercraft to return to the initial and stable position after forces, which dislocate it and make it unstable, affect it has been probed and analyzed. As a stable hovercraft, when it is dislocated and rotated around its longitudinal axis, it should produce a restoring moment to bring it back to its stable position. In fact, this vital moment is a criterion of transverse stability of hovercraft. In this work, the restoringmoment is numerically calculated in a various range of hovercraft’s rotation by simulating the hovercraft in unstable positions and finally, the restoring moment is plotted against hovercraft rotation angle.

کلیدواژه ها:

Computational fluid dynamics ، Hovercraft ، Air cushion ، Static transverse stability