Control of underwater vehicles in inviscid fluids--II. Flows with vorticity

TL;DR

This paper extends previous work on controlling underwater vehicles by demonstrating that controllability results for irrotational flows also apply to more complex flows with vorticity, broadening the understanding of vehicle control in realistic fluid conditions.

Contribution

It proves that local controllability of underwater vehicles in inviscid fluids with vorticity is equivalent to that in irrotational flows, advancing control theory in fluid-vehicle interactions.

Findings

Controllability in irrotational flows extends to flows with vorticity.

Control of position and velocity is feasible in more general fluid flows.

The results apply to a 12-dimensional control vector.

Abstract

In a recent paper, the authors investigated the controllability of an underwater vehicle immersed in an infinite volume of an inviscid fluid, assuming that the flow was irrotational. The aim of the present paper is to pursue this study by considering the more general case of a flow with vorticity. It is shown here that the local controllability of the position and the velocity of the underwater vehicle (a vector in R 12) holds in a flow with vorticity whenever it holds in a flow without vorticity.