Abstract: Accurate dynamics of complex-shaped remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is hard to model. To improve the performance of heading control system and identify the hydrodynamic coefficients of the rotary motion, damping force and torque are calculated by CFD methods. The approach differs from existing CFD methods in: ① overset method is applied instead of moving reference frame method to maintain quality of moving meshes and avoid negative volume of grid elements; ② moving reference frame and overset methods are combined to calculate the rotational hydrodynamic force to accelerate the convergence rate and improve reliability of CFD simulations. To validate the proposed approach, the rotational dynamic model for an ROV is built in terms of the CFD-based hydrodynamic coefficients and then simulated under rotating control commands. The calculation results agree well with the tank tests of real underwater vehicle under the same control commands and thus verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach indirectly.

Key words: complex shape, remotely operated vehicle (ROV), overset method, moving reference frame (MRF), tank tests