Coupled Dynamic Analysis of Underwater Tracked Vehicle and Long Flexible Pipe

Abstract

This paper deals with computational method on coupled dynamics of tracked vehicle on seafloor and long flexible pipe. The tracked vehicle is modeled as rigid-body vehicle, and the linked flexible pipe is discretized according to a lumped-parameter model. The equations of motion of the rigid-body vehicle on the soft seafloor are combined with the governing equations of flexible pipe dynamics. Four Euler parameters method is used to expressed the orientations of the vehicle and the flexible pipe. In order to solve the coupled dynamics of vehicle and flexible pipe an incremental-iterative formulation is implemented. For the time-domain integration Newmark-β method is adopted. The total Jacobean matrix has been derived based on the incremental-iterative formulation. The interactions between the dynamics of flexible pipe and the mobility of the tracked vehicle on soft seafloor are simulated.