Fuel Efficiency Improvements for Amphibious Vehicles

The output of this Phase I will be several lighter weight ACV 1.1 potential candidates, these include components within the land and marine propulsion systems (drive shafts and propeller), hull shapes (bow vane and stern/trim flaps) as well as doors, hatches, inlet grill, exhaust ducts and grills. These components will take advantage of the ideal properties that composite has to offer: lightweight, high specific strength, inherent corrosions resistance, limited constraints in shape and contour. To minimize un-sprung weight and provide the requisite strength/stiffness, in the propulsion system we anticipate the use of composite drive shafts for the wheels and propellers. For the propeller blades and shrouds we anticipate using Sandwiching a low-density, lightweight foam core material between thin face sheets can dramatically increase a laminate's stiffness to match a metallic part with decrease in weight. A sandwich structure is also cost-effective because the relatively low-cost core replaces the materials that would be used to produce a thick laminate.PEI will also investigate using hydrophobic coatings with nano additives on composite shrouds, bow and stern planes surfaces to improve abrasion and impact damage resistance as well as reduce drag. Significant drag reduction has been measured in turbulent flows over hydrophobic surfaces.