Design and Multi-Objective Optimization of an Electric Inflatable Pontoon Amphibious Vehicle

Abstract

This paper presents the design of an electric amphibious vehicle with buoyancy provided by inflatable pontoons, referred to as the Electric Inflatable Pontoon amphibious vehicle (E-IPAMV). To investigate the effect of pontoon arrangements on resistance performance, maneuverability, seakeeping, transverse stability, and longitudinal stability of E-IPAMV, STAR-CCM+ and Maxsurf are used to solve the above performance parameters. A constrained space Latin hypercube experimental design is employed, using the lengths of the inflatable pontoons at five installation positions as input variables, and total resistance, steady turning diameter, maximum pitch angle, transverse metacentric height, and longitudinal metacentric height as output variables. A neural network model is then established and validated. Based on this model, NSGA-II is employed to optimize the pontoon lengths at the five installation positions, yielding Pareto-optimal solutions. Finally, considering project and manufacturing requirements, two optimized design schemes are proposed. Compared to the original design, optimization scheme 1 shows a slight reduction in seakeeping but improvements in other hydrodynamic performances. Meanwhile, optimization scheme 2 enhances all hydrodynamic performances. Specifically, in optimization scheme 2, maneuverability increases by the smallest amount, showing 23.43% improvement compared to the original design, while transverse stability sees the greatest improvement, increasing by 290.99% compared to the original design.