Resistance Characteristics and Improvement of a Pump-Jet Propelled Wheeled Amphibious Vehicle

Pump-jets have a relatively high propulsion efficiency at medium speed and in heavy-load conditions for wheeled amphibious vehicles. However, the geometry of vehicles is very special due to installation requirements pump-jet, which results an obvious resistance on wheels. In order reduce vehicle, characteristics wheels are studied. Regarding pump-jet-propelled its wheel wide range firstly analyzed based experiments numerical simulations. By comparing vehicle with without wheels, it found that hydrodynamic effect can increase total by 14~28%. Then, divided into local global effect. analyzing changes resistance, pressure distribution streamline, influence hydro-mechanism each explored detail. It longitudinal convex concave structures formed wells large negative resistance. According hydro-mechanism, two improvement approaches proposed, includes increasing retraction installing flat plates well bottom. Finally, ultimate model no less than 10% power 8% design speed.