June the 24th – PhD Defense Nicolas Gartner

This thesis focuses on techniques that allows the simulation of dynamic interactions between an underwater vehicle and the surrounding water. The main objective is to propose a satisfactory solution to be able to test control algorithms and hull shapes for underwater vehicles upstream of the design process. In those cases, it would be interesting to be able to simulate solid and fluid dynamics at the same time. The idea developed in this thesis is to use the Smoothed Particles Hydrodynamics (SPH) technique, which is very recent, and which models the fluid as a set of particles without mesh. In order to validate the simulation results a first study has been performed with a hydrodynamic pendulum. This study allowed the development of an innovative method for estimating the hydrodynamic parameters (friction forces and added mass) which is more robust than previous existing methods when it is necessary to use numerical derivatives of the measured signal. Then, the use of two types of SPH solver : Weakly Compressible SPH and Incompressible SPH, is validated following the validation approach proposed in this thesis. Firstly, the behaviour of the fluid alone is studied, secondly, a hydrostatic case, and finally a dynamic case. The use of two methods for modelling the fluid-solid interaction : the pressure mirroring method and the extrapolation method is studied. The ability to reach a limit velocity due to friction forces is demonstrated. The results of the hydrodynamic parameters estimation from simulation tests are finally discussed. The simulated added mass of the solid approaches reality, but the friction forces currently seem not to correspond to reality. Possible improvements to overcome this problem are proposed.