Drag reduction configuration analysis of the grooves on amphibious vehicles walking mechanism

Abstract

Amphibious vehicles are usually equipped with walking mechanisms and grooves which greatly affect the resistance characteristics of sailing. For purpose of improving the sailing speed and reduce energy consumption, the additional resistance at the groove is studied by numerical calculation. A Computational Fluid Dynamics method based on Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solver was used to simulate the resistance performance of the amphibious vehicle, which was verified by towing test. Based on the ideal model without grooves, the size and trend of additional resistance on grooves were compared and studied. Combined with the analysis of flow field and sailing attitude, the cause of additional resistance is explained. Four different groove configurations were compared and analyzed, respectively. The results show that the curved surface type HSAV-3 has better water resistance performance at high speed, which depends on its better flow diversion and lifting effect.