I. Irrotational flows
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 May 2014
In this paper, we investigate the controllability of an underwater vehicle immersed in aninfinite volume of an inviscid fluid whose flow is assumed to be irrotational. Taking ascontrol input the flow of the fluid through a part of the boundary of the rigid body, weobtain a finite-dimensional system similar to Kirchhoff laws in which the control inputappears through both linear terms (with time derivative) and bilinear terms. ApplyingCoron’s return method, we establish some local controllability results for the positionand velocities of the underwater vehicle. Examples with six, four, or only three controlsinputs are given for a vehicle with an ellipsoidal shape.