Influence of ocean currents on the stability of underwater glider self-mooring motion with a cable

The underwater glider mooring motion with a cable has its unique advantages and is gradually gaining attention. The influence of ocean currents on its residence stability cannot be ignored. To analyze the impact of ocean currents on the stability of the underwater glider self-mooring motion, the multi-body dynamics is solved. In this paper, the lumped mass method is utilized to discretize the cable into a series of lumped mass points and massless springs, which considers the nonlinear forces acting on the cable. The kinematic and dynamic models of the underwater glider resident process are established by the KANE method and the generalized force method, respectively, which fully considers the interactions of the underwater glider, cable and anchor. The simulations are conducted by applying fourth Runge-Kutta method in the time domain. The results show that the numerical method proposed is reasonable, and it is observed that the ocean currents with different speeds and directions affect the stability of the underwater glider in the self-mooring motion with a cable. In addition, the length of the cable in the same ocean current environment will also have a certain impact on the stability of the underwater glider.