Influence of Geometric Parameters on the Flow Drag of a Streamlined Body of Revolution

This paper demonstrates the influence of geometric parameter variation of a streamlined body on the flow drag performance. A streamlined body with an outline of elliptic forebody and parabolic afterbody is numerically investigated. The effects of geometric parameters including the ratio of maximum section diameter to body length D/L, and the ratio of forebody length to total length LE/L on the flow drag are revealed by studying the pressure distribution on the body edge. The results show that, for D/L ranging from 0.1 to 0.25, the smaller D/L is, the better the flow drag performance is, for LE/L ranging from 0.2 to 0.9, there is a turning point on the flow drag with the value of LE/L approximates to 0.7. The findings in this work would benefit the selection of geometric parameters to reduce drag in underwater vehicle design.