Advances of complex marine environmental influences on underwater vehicles

Underwater vehicles serve as critical assets for global ocean exploration and naval capability enhancement. The marine environment exhibits intricate hydrodynamic phenomena that significantly threaten underwater vehicle navigation safety, particularly in four prevalent complex conditions: surface waves, oceanic currents, stratified fluids, and internal waves. This comprehensive review systematically examines the impacts of these four marine environments on underwater vehicles through critical analysis and synthesis of contemporary advances in theoretical frameworks, experimental methodologies, and numerical simulation approaches. The identified influences are categorized into five primary aspects: hydrodynamic characteristics, dynamic response patterns, load distribution mechanisms, navigation trajectory optimization, and stealth performance. Particular emphasis is placed on internal wave interactions, with rigorous analysis derived from experimental investigations and numerical modeling of internal wave dynamics and their coupling effects with underwater vehicles. In addition, this review points out and analyzes the shortcomings of the current research in various aspects and puts forward some thoughts and suggestions for future research directions that are worth further exploration, including enriching the research objects, upgrading the experimental techniques, and introducing artificial intelligence methods.