Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Mathematical Modelling, Computational Fluid Dynamics with Ansys CFX and Experimental Analysis of a Hovercraft Prototype’s Air Cushion Lift System
Submission Author:
Ana Paula Pagotti , SP
Co-Authors:
Ana Paula Pagotti, Paulo Eduardo Rodrigues Junior, Elvira Rafikova, Magno Enrique Mendoza Meza
Presenter: Ana Paula Pagotti
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-0675
Abstract
Hovercrafts are amphibious vehicles lifted by an air cushion produced by the pressurization of air between its hull and surface below due to a propeller inside a cavity commonly rounded by a flexible material, known as skirt. These vehicles can be applied in missions such as cargo or coast guard patrolling, rescues, environmental monitoring etc. Aiming to apply some control methods of hovercraft tracking trajectory, it was developed a low cost hovercraft prototype at UFABC using a brushless motor, a MyRio board, aluminum round cake pan, flexible plastic skirt and a three-blade propeller. Therefore, to characterize such hovercraft prototype’s air cushion lift system this paper presents its mathematical modelling based on Bernoulli’s principle, the design of the 3D geometric domain at SolidWorks® and the internal air flow’s CFD performed using Ansys CFX®. Some air cushion pressure experimental data were also taken using a Pitot tube in function of the lift force and about the height from the ground surface and were presented through graphics. The CFD experiments show how the air flow is distributed externally and inside de skirt, through pressure, velocity and streamlines maps that were presented both in 2D and 3D figures.
Keywords
Hovercraft prototype's air cushion, CFD Ansys CFX, experimental pressure analysis
