Investigation of the applicability of Water-Pulley model during ship's maneuvering

Array shape estimation of towed array sonar is an important problem that cannot be ignored during ship's maneuvering. The existing water-pulley model (called WP model) has certain application value due to easily obtaining required information, less computational complexity and being able to predict the array shape. But, the robustness of the WP model is limited. Ship's maneuvering has great impact on array shape estimation. In order to explore the applicability of the model to guide ship's maneuvering and to avoid the model failure, the paper firstly makes simulation to prove that the turning radius is the most important factor, and then proposes a method to guide ship's maneuvering according to the model applicable criterion of maximum direction error and maximum gain loss. Finally the effect of flow disturbance on ship's maneuvering is analyzed.