Conference of Global Chinese Scholars on Hydrodynamics

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF INTERNAL WAVES EXCITED

BY A SUBMARINE MOVING IN THE
TWO-LAYER STRATIFIED FLUID

CHANG Yu
1
, ZHAO Feng
1
, ZHANG J un
1
, HONG Fang-Wen
1
, LI Ping
2
, YUN J un
2
1
China Ship Scientific Research Center, Wuxi 214082, China
2
Shanghai Supercomputer Center, Shanghai 201203, China


ABSTRACT: An unsteady viscous numerical method based
on RANS equations together with VOF approach was used to
simulate the internal and surface wave excited by a submarine
moving in the two-layer fluid at different velocities. The near
field internal waves and surface waves at different Froude
numbers were given systemically. It was shown from the
calculated result that with the increase of Froude number, the
wavelength of internal waves is also increased while the
internal Kelvin angle is decreased. The characteristic of the
surface wave is quite different between the super-critical and
sub-critical case. The internal waves excited by a moving
submarine have the triple-lope pattern, which is similar to the
surface ship case.


KEY WORDS: SUBOFF submarine body, internal wave,
numerical simulation

1. Introduction
In stratified fluid, waves can be generated not
only at the interface of different fluids, but also inside
fluids. This wave inside stratified fluid was called
internal wave. Though the internal wave is also a kind
of gravity waves, but its restoring forces are combined
with gravity and buoyancy. The resuming frequency
of internal waves is quite small, so it has many
characters different from surface waves.
There are many sources to excite internal waves.
They may come from the surface, bottom and interior
of stratified fluid, such as the flow stress and pressure
field varying in short-period, current past the bottom
etc. Among these, internal waves generated from a
moving submerged body have specific importance
[1]
.
The problem of internal waves generated by
moving a submerged body has been studied by many
scholars on theoretical, experimental and numerical
methods
[2-8]
. But in general, the research on the
problem of internal waves generated by a moving
submerged body still needs more to be developed.
Many simplifications were used in the theoretical
methods, such as geometric simplification (using
sphere, even point source or dipole instead of real
submerged bodies) and theoretical simplification (the
effect of viscous and non-linear was often ignored).
The experimental methods also have some problems,
such as the immature of measurement method,
obscurity of scale laws. Today, with the rapid progress
in CFD methods and powerful computing ability,
numerical technique will be helpful to exert the
intrinsic superiority of CFD, and help us to understand
internal waves generated by a moving submerged
bodies more thoroughly and comprehensively.
In this paper, an unsteady numerical method
which was based on RANS equations was developed
and VOF method was used to study the internal and
surface waves generated by the SUBOFF submarine
body moving at different velocities in the two-layer
stratified fluid. Basing on the past works, we extend
the applicable range of our method
[9-10]
to low
velocities cases. The near field distribution of internal
and surface waves, generated by the SUBOFF sub-
marine body moving at different Froude numbers, was
presented systemically. It was shown from the calcu-
lated results that with the increase of Froude number,
the wavelength of internal waves were also increased
while the internal Kelvin angle was decreased. The
characteristic of the surface wave is quite different
between the super-critical case and sub-critical case.
The internal wave excited by a moving submarine
have the triple-lope pattern, which is similar to the
surface ship case.

2. Model and Calculation Condition
The SUBOFF submarine model is chosen for
present research, which was designed by DARPA
(Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) to
help building a validation database for submarine

Biography: CHANG Yu (1979- ), Male
330

CFD analysis software. The model includes bare hull,
a fairwater and four identical stern appendages, as
shown in figure 1. In our study we magnified it by 20
times. As a result, the final computational model was
87 meters long and the tonnage became 5600 tons, the
size before and after magnified is shown in table 1.

Fig.1 SUBOFF Submarine Model

The simulation region was shown in figure 2.
The overall water depth is 145 meters. The depths of
fresh and salty water are 45 and 100 meters
respectively. The submarine body is placed in the
center of fresh waters. The distance between interface
and the axis of submarine is 15 meters. The environ-
mental temperature is 20 , the fresh water has the
density of 998.16kg/m
3
and viscosity coefficient is
1.0037410
-6
m
2
/s, the salty water has the density of
1024.73 kg/m
3
and viscosity coefficient is 1.05372
10
-6
m
2
/s.
Fig. 2 Computing Condition

The Cartesian coordinate system is used in this
paper, with origin located at the projecting point of
bow endpoint of the body on undisturbed free surface.

Table 1 Dimension of SUBOFF model before and after
magnifying (in meters)
Before After
Length 4.35 87.00
Maximal radius 0.25 5.00
Fairwater length 0.37 7.40
Fairwater height 0.22 4.44

With the same stratified condition and submerged
depths, we simulated three cases in which submarine
moving at different velocities. The critical Froude
number and moving Froude number which can
calculated form equation (1) and equation (2), are
shown in table 2.

Table 2 Froude number at different velocities
Velocities Fn
997 . 0
1
= Fr , 074 . 0
2
= Fr
5 Knots 0.068
2
Fr Fr <
7 Knots 0.095
1 2
Fr Fr Fr < <
12 Knots 0.164
1 2
Fr Fr Fr < <

Sharman et al
[11]
proved analytically that there
are two Kelvin patterns in finite depth two-layer
stratified fluid, one is surface wave pattern, the other
is internal wave pattern. Each case is corresponding to
a specified critical Froude number, which can be
calculated from equation (1). Obviously, is
larger than .
1
Fr
2
Fr
2
2 1
2 1 1 2
) (
) 1 (
4
1
) 1 (
2
1
h h
h h
Fr
n
n
+

+ =
+

(1)
where = n 1, 2.
The Froude number of submarine moving in a
finite depth two-layer stratified fluid is calculated
from:
) ( /
2 1
2 2
h h g U Fr + = (2)

3. Numerical Method
3D unsteady uncompressible RANS equations
are solved, one-equation Splart-Allmaras turbulence
model is used, and the VOF method is used to treat
the free surface and interface. A cell-center-based
finite volume approach is used to discretize the
governing equations, the diffusive term is discretized
by center difference scheme of 2
nd
order accurate,
and the convection term was discretized by a upwind
scheme of 2
nd
order accurate, the SIMPLE method is
used to deal with the coupling of pressure and
velocity, the algebraic equations yielding from dis-
cretization is solved by Gauss-Seidel iteration
approach and AMG (Algebraic Multigrid) method is
used to accelerate the convergence.

3.1 Governing equations
The governing equations are the 3D uncom-
pressible RANS equations. Continuity equation and
momentum equation in tensorial expression can be
written as:
331

0 =

i
i
x
u
(3)
=

j
i
j
i
x
u
u
t
u

) (
/ /
j i
j
i
j i
i
u u
x
u
x x
p
F

(4)
where 1, 2, 3. = n

3.2 Turbulence modeling
Splart-Allmaras
[12]
turbulence model is used in
this paper. This is a relatively simple one-equation
model.
The transport variable v
~
in SA model is
defined as the turbulence viscosity except the viscous
affected area, transport equation of v
~
can be written
was:
( ) ( ) =

i
i
u v
x
v
t
~ ~
+
v
G
( )
v
j
b
j j v
Y
x
v
C
x
v
v
x

2
2
~
~ ~
~
1

(5)
where, is the production of turbulent viscosity and
is the dissipation of turbulent viscosity that occurs
in the near-wall region due to wall blocking and
viscous damping,
v
G
v
Y
v
~ and are constants, is the
molecular kinematical viscosity.
2 b
C v

3.3 VOF approach
The VOF model is a fixed grid technique de-
signed for two or more immiscible fluids where the
position of the interface between the fluids is part of
the unknown to be found through the solution
procedure. In the VOF model, the fluids share a single
set of momentum equations, and the volume fraction
of each of the fluids in each computational cell is
tracked throughout the domain.
If the m
th
liquid's volume fraction in the cell is
denoted as
m
, then the following three conditions are
possible:
m
0 , the cell is empty (of the m
th
liquid)
m
1, the cell is full (of the m
th
liquid)
0<
m
<1, the cell contains liquid interface
In VOF method,
m
is also used to determine
the location of interface. The normal direction of the
interface lies in the direction in which the value of
m
changes most rapidly. The tracking of the inter-
face is accomplished by solving the continuity equa-
tion of the volume fraction. For the m
th
liquid, this
equation has the form:
0 =

i
m
i
m
x
u
t

(6)
There is a constraint

=
=
n
m
m
1
1 (7)
That has to be imposed so that the total volume of the
fluid is a constant for the impressibility assumption to
be satisfied. In the equation (2), n is the total number
of liquids under consideration.
The density of the whole fluid in each cell is evaluated
by volume-fraction-average of all liquids in the cell:
m m


= (8)
All other properties (e.g., viscosity ) are computed
in the same way.
In this paper, the density in governing equation
are set in salty, fresh or mixed water density res-
pectively when the grid cell is full with salty, fresh or
mixed water.

4. Grids
The simulation domain is determined by
magnitude of the surface and internal wavelength.
When submarine velocity was 5 knots and 7 knots, the
domain extends 500 meters in front of submarine,
1000 meters behind body and 600 meters in broadside.
For 12 knots case, the domain extends 2000 meters
after submarine and 800 meters in broadside. In all the
cases, 40 meters above the free surface is taken to
represent the air. Considering the symmetry of flow,
we merely need to compute half of the flow region.
To get regular grids at both free surface and
interface, the quadrilateral grids are designed in the
domain around the submarine, while the hexahedron
grids are used in all other regions. The grids are
illustrated in figure 3 to figure 6. The total grid cell
number is about 4 millions.



Fig. 3 Grids of near the bow in symmetric plane
332



Fig. 4 Grids around stern in symmetric plane


Fig. 5 Grids behind submarine in symmetric plane


Fig. 6 Grids at the horizontal plane

In grid generation, nodes distribution and cell
size are determinated by the requirements of practical
flow. Taking the free surface for an example, in
vertical direction, some researches have already
shown that the height of surface waves is in millimeter
scale when submarine moving slowly, it means that
quite fine grids are needed near the free surface.
Practically, we set minimum dimension in 1
centimeter near free surface due to the available
calculation ability. In longitudinal direction, the
surface wavelength can be gotten from the following
equation:
2
2
U
g
=

(9)
So, the wavelengths are about 4.23 m for 5 knots, 8.30
m for 7 knots and 24.39 m for 12knots, respectively.
In order to control the total grid cell numbers, we take
the grid scale to be one meter in longitudinal direction.
Consequently, we have about 4 girds in each wave-
length for 5 knots, 8 grids for 7 knots and 24 girds for
12 knots. The treatment of grids near the interface is
similar to the free surface.
The upstream inlet, side, top and bottom boun-
daries are all treated as uniform flow, the velocity inlet
conditions are used. The outlet boundary condition is
set in downstream plane. The no-slip boundary con-
dition is used on the submarine wall. In the middle
section plane, the symmetrical boundary condition is
used.

5. Results and Analysis
Numerical calculation was performed in high-
performance PC cluster and Dawning 4000A super
computer. Calculation time was about 300 hours for
each case when 16 CPUs were used.
The wave height distributions of internal Kelvin
wave at different Froude numbers are shown in figure
7 to figure 9. The calculation result
[10]
of a higher
Froude number is shown in figure 10, simultaneously.
Being consistent with R. W. Yeungs study
[13]
, there
are transverse wave and divergent wave in the inter-
face simultaneously when the Froude number of
moving submarine is less than the critical Froude
number of the internal wave pattern, but there will
only be divergent wave in the interface when the
Froude number of moving submarine is larger than the
critical Froude number of internal wave pattern. In our
calculation, with the increasing of Froude number, the
wavelength of internal wave is increased while
internal Kelvin angle decreased. The waves in the
interface will also be obviously affected by surface
wave pattern when Froude number is large enough
(see Fig.10).
The wave height distributions of surface wave at
Fr=0.068 and Fr=0.312 are also presented in figure 11
and figure 12, respectively. When Froude number is
equal to 0.068, the Froude number of moving
submarine is less than the critical Froude number of
internal wave pattern, so waves in interface are mainly
affected by internal Kelvin wave pattern. But when
Froude number was equal to 0.312, waves in interface
are mainly affected by surface Kelvin wave pattern. At
these two cases, surface waves generated by moving
submarine are quite different.
In sub-critical case (Fr=0.068), wavelength of
surface wave and Kelvin angle are quite large. In the
front of submarine there is an obvious water hillock.
In super-critical case (Fr=0.312), the surface waves is
the typical Kelvin waves with a fixed Kelvin angle of
19.5, It is different from surface waves generated by
surface ships which only have the bow Kelvin waves.
When Froude number is equal to 0.095 and 0.164,
333

waves in free surface are mainly affected by surface
Kelvin wave pattern. But its wavelength is too small
to be simulated using our grids, so no good calculation
result was obtained. It was shown in Hoytes study
[14]

that in order to get good results, more than 10
8
cells
are needed to simulate these low Froude number
flows.











Fig.7 Internal wave-height distribution at Fr=0.068


Fig. 8 Internal wave-height distribution at Fr=0.095



Fig. 9 Internal wave-height distribution at Fr=0.164


Fig. 10 Internal wave-height distribution at Fr=0.312







334


Fig. 11 Surface wave-height distribution at Fr=0.068


Fig. 12 Surface wave-height distribution at Fr=0.312

The internal wave height distribution along
X-axis (Z=0) at different Froude numbers is shown in
figure 13. The internal wave profile along Z-axis in
different X positions at Froude number of 0.164 is
shown in figure 14. We can see the internal wave
excited by a moving submarine have the triple-lope
pattern, which is quite similar to the surface ship
[15]
.

6. Conclusions
Numerical method based on RANS equations
and VOF approach which developed in this paper can
simulate internal waves exited by a submarine moving
in the two-layer stratified fluid with different Froude
numbers, the calculated results agree well with
theoretical analysis and other literatures.


Fig. 13 Wave-height distribution at interface (Y=0)



Fig.14 Wave profile along Z-axis at interface in different X
positions (Fr=0.164)

It is shown that in our calculations, with the
increasing of Froude number, the wavelength of inter-
nal wave is increased while internal Kelvin angle
decreased. The characteristic of the surface waves is
quite different between the super-critical case and
sub-critical case. The internal waves excited by a
moving submarine have the triple-lope pattern, which
is similar to the surface ship.
With the limitation of compute ability, CPU time
and numerical dissipation of CFD, numerical method
based on full viscous flow theory can only simulating
the near field waves behind submarine for about 10 to
20 submarine lengths. In future works, we plan to
develop a coupling method, which can present further
field information by potential solver while still obtain
fine flow near the bodies on viscous approach.
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