Motion, Stability, and Control of Towed Arrays

Aero or hydrodynamics of towed bodies can be trickier than one might think.  The relative position of adjacent array elements may need to be known with high accuracy.  Individual elements can have stability issues or require independent attitude control.  Drag reduction may be important, or lift augmentation might even be required.  Elements with complicated shapes or mountings can experience nonlinear, unstable, or chaotic dynamics.  Developing stability matrices for such arrays would require huge amounts of towing tank or wind tunnel time. 

Each of these design challenges requires precise knowledge of the forces acting on an array.  Whether addressing steady or unsteady array flows, RANS tools are perfect for calculating these forces.  AFT has used RANS both to design array lift devices and to predict array drag forces.  It has also used RANS like an experimentalist would use a Planer Motion Mechanism — to predict stability, maneuvering, and control derivatives.  Click on a menu item at left to view examples of AFT’s towed array design services.