A prototype of a 3000m-class underwater glider for virtual mooring is being developed by JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) with RIAM (the Research Institute for Applied Mechanics) of Kyushu University. The vehicle houses a CTD sensor and glides back and forth between the sea surface and the seabed collecting ocean data in a specific area (virtual mooring area) for more than one year. A prototype glider "Tsukuyomi" has been built, and we conducted gliding tests in a towing tank in December 2011, and presented the successful results at ISOPE2013. The results of motion simulation in a transient state, however, were not in good agreement with the experimental results.
This paper summarizes our restudy of the hydrodynamic coefficients of the vehicle and modification of the motion simulator.
