Vehicle Dynamics
The vehicle's inertial and buoyancy properties are critical for ensuring its ability to maneuver properly without our software team having to do extra work. The competition specifies that the vehicle must be slightly positively buoyant. A high metacenter would ensure that our vehicle would be self-righting in the roll and pitch axis.
I found the waterline of the vehicle through a Solidworks design study:
The design study revealed that the vehicle was neither overly buoyant nor negatively buoyant.
An outstanding achievement of our team this year is that the software division was able to create a full simulation of the competition environment while including physics. Having a simulation made it a lot easier for the mechanical team to validate their designs through simulation trials.
The simulation revealed that peak thruster use during a simple dive maneuver barely exceeded half of full thrust, and an ideal amount of 'downforce' was required for the vehicle to maintain depth, eliminating the need for dive weights. Additionally, the data confirmed that the vehicle was self-righting, as there was little to no oscillation in the power of the vertically-oriented thrusters.