Hydrodynamic Aspects of Tracked Amphibians

Abstract

An amphibian is by definition capable of traveling on land or water or on the ambiguous littoral between the two. Amphibious vehicles have been conceived in many forms - supported on buoyant tires or pneumatic rollers, on padded tracks, or on rubber or metal crawler tracks. In some cases, the wheels or tracks used for land propulsion supply the propulsive thrust in water; in others the land supports are either retracted or dragged along while the craft is propelled by an auxiliary device. In this paper, only metal tracks are examined. Interest is chiefly in propulsion by tracks along, but brief attention is given to auxiliary propulsion.