DEVELOPMENT OF A FLOATING TOW BODY FOR SHALLOW WATER BOTTOM AND SUB-BOTTOM IMAGING APPLICATIONS

C Kannan, V.Ananthasubramanian, R Dhilsha, M A Atmanand

Abstract: A floating tow body which can be towed at a speed range of 2-6 knots with a pay load of 50 kg is designed and tested as part of the development of a Buried Object Location Sonar (BOLS) for shallow water imaging application. In this paper the results of extensive towing tank measurements of a floating tow body with the diamond and a cross shaped bow are presented and compared. A cross shaped bow with a stream lined body shape is adopted for the floating tow body for minimizing the drag as well as the turbulence during the tow. Both the bow shape as well as the dimensions of the body is optimized based on the towing tank experimental results so that the body can be towed smoothly with minimum turbulence to avoid acoustic noise generation during the SONAR tests. An iterative experimental procedure is carried out in finalizing the dimensions and the shape of the tow body

Keywords: Floating tow body, bow shape, towing test.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0401072