Design, analysis, and performance verification of a water jet thruster for amphibious jumping robot

Abstract

In nature, certain aquatic animals and seabirds are capable of leaping from water surface and overcoming aquatic obstacles with ease. Inspired by that, researchers have developed various underwater robots, which can perform the aquatic jumping motion. Although there are several ways to achieve it, the water jet propulsion is the most appropriate approach for the amphibious jumping robot, which is under development. In this paper, a high-performance water jet thruster powered by liquid nitrogen is proposed to be the potential actuator for the amphibious jumping robot. The theoretical jumping model is built to optimize the initial volume fraction of water inside thruster and analyze its parameters' variation during water jet. Then the computational fluid dynamics simulations by ANSYS FLUENT software are carried out to analyze the self-pressurization process of liquid nitrogen as well as the water jet process. Finally, the proof-of-concept outdoor experiments present that the 3.7 kg thruster's maximum aquatic and terrestrial jumping heights are 25.1 m and 24.4 m, respectively. A simple heat transfer analysis between water and liquid nitrogen is also conducted, and the order of magnitude estimation of heat transfer coefficient is given to be 265W/ (m2·K) based on the experimental reaction time.