A Mixed Analytical-Numerical Method for the Vibro-Acoustic Analysis of an Underwater Ring-Stiffened Cylindrical Shell Containing Substructures

Abstract

A new sono-elastic substructure method is proposed in this paper to improve the computational efficiency of the hull-substructure coupled and fluid-structure interacted vibration and acoustic radiation of a submerged cylindrical-shell-type vehicle. The typical part of the vehicle structure is divided into the main hull and the internal substructures. The fluid-structure interaction problem of the main hull is solved by an analytical method based on the simplified model of a single-hull ring-stiffened cylindrical shell simply supported at both ends. Meanwhile, the substructures are numerically modeled through the Finite Element Method, with the condensed dynamic stiffness matrices of them obtained via the Superelement Method of Modal Synthesis. The main hull and the internal substructures are then integrated according to the boundary compatibility conditions at the connecting parts. Thus, a Mixed Analytical-Numerical Substructure (MANS) method is formulated. The applicability of this method is validated by two numerical examples as well as the test results of a large-scale submerged structural model. It is shown that the MANS method is suitable for the prediction of vibration and acoustic radiation of typical cylindrical-shell-type submerged structures in the medium frequency region.