Abstract—Many oceanographic applications require an underwater body to be towed at a specified water depth. But because of the tow cable force the underwater towed body may tend to come to the towing vessel level. Depressor is a device that gives a depressive force on the underwater towed body and helps it to be towed at a particular depth. There are many forms of the depressors designed with different configurations for the purpose. Hydrodynamic depressors are those which provide the depressive force derived from the negative lift created by the depressor wings. This paper presents the CFD analysis of a hydrodynamic depressor carried out using the software FLUENT. The incompressible Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equation with Standard k- turbulence model is solved to estimate hydrodynamic performance of the depressor. The characteristics such as lift and drag forces, lift and drag coefficients, velocity and pressure distribution around the wings and body of the depressor are evaluated at a negative angle (angle that gives a lift component of force in the downward direction) of attack. The CFD results are compared with available experimental results and are found to be matching in close tolerance.

Index Terms—Angle of Attack (AOA), Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Depressor, Depressive force, Standard k- turbulence model

Cite: Jithin P N and Senthil Prakash M N, "Numerical Investigation of the Hydrodynamic Behavior of the Depressor," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 256-264, January 2014.