Influence of a walking mechanism on the hydrodynamic performance of a high-speed wheeled amphibious vehicle

Abstract. In order to reduce the resistance and increase speed for a high-speed wheeled amphibious vehicle, a wheel-retracting mechanism was applied to a walking mechanism and the influence was researched. Firstly, to obtain a reliable numerical method, a realizable shear stress transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model built by an overset mesh technique was used and compared with the corresponding model tests. Secondly, the effect of the wheels' flip angle on resistance, heave and pitch was investigated. Then, the wheel well was optimized by numerical simulation. Finally, the results showed that the influence of the wheels on resistance was more significant, and the larger the wheels' flip angle was, the more significant the resistance reduction would be. An optimized wheel well was beneficial to resistance reduction. Furthermore, the running attitude became steadier, thereby decreasing the heave and pitch.