Research of North Pole amphibious vehicle's technologies and Powertrain simulation

Abstract

The aim of this master’s thesis is to provide a useful framework for upcoming researches about amphibious vehicles designed for the North Pole. This thesis is a brief introduction to the North Pole Amphibious Vehicles, which consists in studying the main requirements of this kind of vehicle. Thus, the research about amphibious vehicle technologies is done on the state-of-art and different powertrain systems and configurations are studied. In this project, a 3D design of an amphibious vehicle and its flow simulation were created with Solidworks in order to calculate the longitudinal parameters of the vehicle. The powertrain system has been chosen following an analysis of conventional, electric and hybrid powertrains, so as to determine which system has a better performance at the North Pole. Different powertrain configurations have been modelled in Matlab Simulink following the mathematical equations that describe the components or using the Powertrain Blockset offered by Matlab. The software simulates the whole powertrain dynamics in conjunction. The results obtained by the simulation were used to compare the 4WD and 6WD powertrains in order to find out which are the most suitable.