Turbulent Wake Characteristics of an Object Moving in a Stratified Medium

Comprehension of the flow field around any moving object in the ocean is crucial for developing acoustic as well as non-acoustic techniques of detecting those objects. These objects generate different wake patterns behind them in the form of turbulent wakes and V-shaped Kelvin envelopes while they move submerged. These turbulent wakes create one of the crucial starting points for the detection techniques. This paper investigates the far-field turbulent wake characteristics of such moving objects in a stratified medium through computational fluid dynamics simulations using the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver with a suitable turbulence model that uses various Froude numbers and pitch angles. The geometry of a DARPA sub off the submarine bare hull with linear density stratification is considered for the analysis. The simulation results are verified by experimental data reported by another researcher.