Hydrodynamic analysis of an underwater body including free-surface effects

Boundary integral algorithms are developed to analyze three-dimensional inviscid fluid-body interactions, including the nonlinear free-surface effects. Hydrodynamic coefficients are computed for various body geometries, some corresponding to that of small underwater vehicles, in deep waters and near the free surface. The fully nonlinear unsteady wave-radiation problem corresponding to forced submerged-body oscillations and forward translation are solved using the mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian formulation (Longuet-Higgins and Cokelet, 1976). By implementing the leading-order free-surface conditions on the calm surface, linear time-domain solutions are also obtained. The nonlinear and linear results are compared to quantify the nonlinear free-surface effects. Linear frequency-domain analysis of the wave-body interactions is also carried out using a boundary-integral method based on the simple-source distribution (Yeung, 1974). The linear time-domain and the latter frequency-domain results are also compared for a validation of the algorithms.