| 摘要 |
1,190,206. Air cushion vehicles. BRITISH HOVERCRAFT CORP Ltd. 10 May, 1968 [22 June, 1967], No. 28955/67. Heading B7K. In a plenum chamber air cushion vehicle wherein the cushion is enclosed by a flexible skirt composed of an upper inflatable chamber extended downwardly by contiguous looped finger elements vibrations in the skirt assembly are reduced and good over-wave performance and stability is ensured by inflating the upper chamber to a pressure between 1À15 and 5 times the cushion pressure. Additionally, when the chamber is formed by an inflatable looped skirt the distance between the fixing points of the loop to the body must be greater than 0À9 times the vertical distance between the underside of the rigid structure and the lower tip of the skirt assembly. The vehicle has a rigid structure 2 to which is attached along the bow and sides an inflatable bag skirt 1 with depending finger elements 3 contiguously arranged along its lower surface, the portion 1 being sub-divided along its length into compartments 7 by partitions 6. Whereas the attachment points 4, 5 of portion 1 are at a fixed spacing, the pressure in the bag is made variable by connecting each compartment 7 to a variable volume accumulator 8. Each compartment 7, or combination of compartments, and its associated accumulator 8 is supplied with pressure air from a source of supply separate from that which supplies the cushion 12 so that the ratio between the chamber pressure and cushion pressure is maintained at the specified ratio by control means, not shown, An effect of variation of the pressure in the compartments 7 is to vary the area of the cushion 12. The rear end of the cushion is closed by a bag-skirt 14 or other closure means and when it is desired to operate the vehicle as a displacement vessel the bow skirt and the skirt 14 are retracted and the side compartments are inflated to a relatively high pressure to act as catamaran floats. |
