Stanley Gray Lecture: Seakeeping Behaviour of a Surfaced Underwater Vehicle

IMarEST TV recording of our Stanley Gray Lecture: Seakeeping Behaviour of a Surfaced Underwater Vehicle as part of IMarEST Prestige Lecture Series. The presentation took place on the 14th April 2021.

Stanley Gray Fellowship winner Mathieu Courdier discusses the motion response of Underwater Vehicles to waves.

Underwater Vehicles (UV) like drones and gliders are widely used in the industrial and scientific world, as they allow for easy, safe and cheap access to operations. Submarines also are important in navies as they provide unrivalled operational advantages.

Despite being used at depths, UVs are required to travel on the sea surface for some period of time, where they are subject to waves. However, most of the hydrodynamics knowledge applicable to conventional surface ships is not relevant to UVs due to their particular hull forms. Also, hydrodynamics is of critical importance as it defines the ability of a UV to carry out its missions: hence seakeeping, resistance and manoeuvrability forms the subject of this research.

The research is undertaken through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). It allows to model the fluids around an UV hull, and the variation of some parameters as the speed, the wave height or even the hull shape helps to understand the flow dynamics. But CFD also requires ‘real world’ validation, that are carried out through experimental testing at model scale.

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Mathieu Courdier AMIMarEST is a PhD candidate following a strong lineage of leading Underwater Vehicle (UV) hydrodynamics research, carried out at the Australian Maritime College.

The session was hosted by John Polglaze CMarSci FIMarEST FRINA, environmental scientist.

About the Stanley Gray Lecture Series

The IMarEST Stanley Gray Lectures (and the annual Stanley Gray Awards) are named in memory of Stanley Gray who was the Chief Mechanical Engineer at the Port Directorate of Basra during the 1950s & 60s. When he died in 1973 he left half his estate to be held by the Institute in trust to create the Stanley Gray Fund. He expressed the wish that the money should be awarded via a scholarship or prize to wherever the Institute saw distinction in Marine Engineering. This remit has been expanded following due process to include Marine Science and Technology. The Stanley Gray Series of prestige lectures, launched in 2002, is held to mark his generosity to, and patronage of the Institute