Due to operational requirements, such as transits and communication, underwater vehicles are required to operate on the surface although they are optimised for underwater operations. Operating on the surface significantly impacts the manoeuvring, control and powering characteristics, requiring the need to understand the environmental effects on the vehicles.This paper investigates the ability of computational fluid dynamics to accurately predict the global loads acting on an underwater vehicle operating on the surface. A series of straight line and static angle of drift conditions were simulated, and the resulting global loads validated against experimental data.The validation confirms the ability of numerical methods with appropriate settings to study and accurately predict the global loads acting on an underwater vehicle operating on the surface. This numerical approach will be used to generate the manoeuvring coefficients for time-domain simulation models to investigate vehicle manoeuvrability and control.

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