Amphibious Vehicle Propulsion System. Volume 1

The David Taylor Research Center has funded the development of an electric drive train for a waterjet propulsion system to demonstrate high water speed in a Marine Corps propulsion system demonstrator vehicle. In the water, this vehicle will be propelled by four waterjets, each rated at 400hp, to provide the required thrust. The task was to design and develop a system that would be compact, lightweight, efficient and available to support vehicle demonstration testing. A system trade-off study resulted in selection of an approach which uses four identical electric water propulsion modules, consisting of an AC alternator controller, an AC induction motor with integral speed decreasing gearbox and a coupling that connects the motorgearbox to the waterjet. This report documents the hardware design effort, fabrication and testing completed. Keywords Waterjet propulsion Electric drives.