The CFD Potentiality on the AUV Hydrodynamic Design

Hydrodynamic aspects of autonomous underwater vehicles, even if of- ten underestimated, play a crucial role in the overall vessel design. Over the past few decades, computational fluid dynamics has become a widely used tool for in- vestigating complex hydrodynamic problems in a fast and reliable way, often sub- stituting the most expensive and time-consuming experimental campaigns. Nev- ertheless, even if several researchers adopt these approaches to investigate some specific aspect (i.e. vehicle resistance, PMM tests, etc.), from an industrial point of view they are rarely used in the vehicle design stages (in particular during the preliminary ones), because of vehicles designs are primary driven by control as- pects (i.e. payload arrangements, propulsion layout, etc.). The present paper tries to show possible research fields where these numerical tools can provide a valuable contribution to their design. Different aspects are investigated, ranging from the typical ones, such as the impact of the vehicle geometry on the resistance, to the most complex ones, such as hull-propeller interactions in hovering conditions. This activity demonstrates that a more deep knowledge of these hydrodynamic aspects can better drive the vehicle design, obtaining a more effective and efficient design.