Computational Fluid Dynamic Analysis of Amphibious Vehicle

Development of unmanned amphibious vehicle for diverse applications including monitoring of oil-spills, military border and water quality measurement in remote water bodies are in the rise. These vehicles suffer for its stability and endurance due to the effect of drag in varied wind conditions. The present work focused on minimizing the drag and improving the aerodynamic performance characteristics. The computational fluid dynamic analysis is performed through considering various turbulent models such as k-omega, k-epsilon and SST k-omega (shear stress transport) to estimate the co-efficient of drag of the designed amphibious vehicle. Static analysis is performed through varying the angle of attack (AoA) from 0(0) to 10(0) under relative airspeed of 5, 8.3 and 10 m/sec. The velocity, pressure and turbulent kinetic energy contours predicted the streamline of air flowaround the vehicle and instability regions.