tow cable modeling program 1

[windell747]

Hi, I'm attempting to write as simple program to analyze the forces acting on a tow cable that is being pulled through the water by a ship. To serve as a very simple model, I want to assume that the ship is not moving up and down and the motion is in a single direction (only 2D motion, no turning). For modeling, I want to split the cable into many rigid links that are connected to each other. At the end of the cable, I would just put a weight (instead of a towfish). Again, I would like to take a small bite by making a simple model that analyzes the forces acting on a set of connected rigid links. Some of the forces that I can identify acting on each link is gravitational force, boyant force, drag force, and forces acting on it by adjacent links.

This is a project that I've decided to do for my computational physics course, and we've only been given about three weeks to come up with something. I'm a pretty experienced C programmer and I've successdully modeled the trajectory of baseballs and rockets using the Runga Kutta 4th order method, so I was thinking about using that somehow. Any suggestions as to resources or how to go about doing this would be great!

 

[GregLocock]

I'd do it in Excel, but that's me. If I were you I'd make it 3D from the get go, as I can imagine cases where it'll buckle sideways.

I'd also make sure each link has an associated axial stiffness, damping and mass.

You'll run into a bit of bother when it comes to working out the drag force, when the axis of the link is not paralllel to the direction of motion.

Cheers

Greg Locock

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