A significant challenge for wheel- and propeller-driven amphibious vehicles during swimming operations involves the egress from bodies of water. The vehicle needs to be able to swim to the bank, and then propel itself up the bank using water propellers and wheels simultaneously. To accurately predict the ability of the vehicle to climb the bank, it is important to accurately model: (1) the interaction of the flow through the propellers, around the vehicle hull, and over the bank; (2) the wheel / bank interaction; (3) the suspension system spring, damping, and motion-limiting forces, tire deformation and loading characteristics, and wheel and hull motions (both translation and rotation); and (4) the drivetrain power distribution to the wheels. Detailed modeling and simulation of these physics and processes - such as the wheel, hull, and suspension system motions and force interactions, propeller rotation and resulting flow, etc. - would be highly computationally expensive. Therefore, to make the water egress problem more tractable to solve, various modeling simplifications - such as the use of an actuator disc methodology for propeller flow modeling and Bekker’s terramechanics methodology for the wheel / bank interaction - were introduced to facilitate rapid simulation. The integration of a simplified vehicle solver with a six-degree-of-freedom (6DOF) body dynamics and multiphase Volume of Fluid (VOF) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver (STAR-CCM+) resulted in a robust, comprehensive methodology for modeling and simulating amphibious vehicle water egress onto soft soil for various environmental and vehicle characteristics and operational conditions.
Amphibious Vehicle Water Egress Modeling and Simulation Using CFD and Bekker’s Methodology
Sae Technical Papers
SAE WCX Digital Summit ; 2021
2021-04-06
Conference paper
English
Amphibious Vehicle Water Egress Modeling and Simulation Using CFD and Bekker’s Methodology
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