To develop a Source Panel Method Tool to Estimate Pressure Distribution over a 3D Non-Lifting Prolate Ellipsoid of Revolution

During the initial design phase of submarines or UUV, a quick estimation for its hydrodynamics related to maneuvering is required. CFD predicts accurate results, is computationally extensive, thus not a viable solution to be employed at the early design stage. Therefore, a requirement exists to devise a Panel Method based tool to estimate the hydrodynamics characteristics of UUV hull configurations. This study is part of a larger study where a complete tool comprised of both lifting and non-lifting surfaces of UUV is desired to be developed. In this study, a panel method-based code is developed to estimate the pressure distribution over a general non-lifting hull form of a submarine or UUV. Panel Method is being less in computational demand as compared to other Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques offer a realistic option to look into detail to fulfill the said requirement. Thus, a study on a fully submerged underwater vehicle in steady conditions using fundamental concepts of potential flow theory for ideal flows is carried out. In this study, firstly, a general shape like a prolate ellipsoid (which is ellipsoid of revolution) is developed in Matlab. Equations thus developed using the Source Panel Method (SPM) will be then translated into a Matlab code to obtain pressure distribution over the prolate ellipsoid for validation with available analytical data.