Design and CFD Simulation of a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)

The main objective of the article was to design the structure of an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) based on the design principles and previous works. In addition, investigated the hydro-static parameters by ROV modeling in SolidWorks, and hydrodynamic coefficient through numerical modeling using the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package ANSYS CFX. Initially, the parameters that affect the ROV performance are specified such as frame size, materials, shape, components placement, and etc. Then the ROV modeled in CAD software to obtain the basic hydro-static variables including the mass, volume, area, center of gravity, center of buoyancy, geometry properties, and etc. The ROV model revised in some cases to optimize it. CFD simulations were carried out on the simplified model to gain initial results accurately. Simulations were conducted at varying speeds and directions. A preliminary hybrid mesh was created. From these simulations, hydrodynamic forces were calculated and hydrodynamic coefficients derived.