Resistance reduction characteristics and design optimization of amphibious vehicle tail wings

Underwater tail wings are efficient appendages for reducing the resistance of amphibious vehicles, yet current research on such hydrofoils remains limited. This study used CFD to investigate the effects of tail wing shape, downward angle, and chord length on the resistance of a hydrofoil amphibious vehicle. Based on the numerical simulation results and the surrogate modeling techniques, the relationship between each tail wing's design parameters and the vehicle's hydrodynamic characteristics is constructed. Multi-objective optimization was carried out for the tail wing, resulting in a hydrofoil amphibious vehicle model with minimal resistance and excellent tail wing hydrodynamic characteristics. The results show that installing NACA66-209 as the underwater tail wing can obtain better hydrodynamic performance of the vehicle. Under the design speed, the resistance reduction effect and hydrodynamic characteristics of the tail wing are improved by 12.7% and 10% respectively after the optimized design based on the NACA66-209 hydrofoil.