Device supporting military vehicles buoyancy and ballistic resistance

A deep modernization of equipment due to its assembling to the modern requirements of a battlefield and getting full compatibility to NATO structures caused that some military vehicles equipment with additional staff lose their buoyancy or are at the edge of losing it. The solution to this problem can be setting an additional device which helps to increase mass that allows to keep buoyancy of a military vehicle. The panels are fixed as the outer elements of the container which is simultaneously used for storing the elastic air cushions. Before the water crossing, the air cushions are filled with gas and additional buoyancy force is generated. The paper presents a structure and usage of a multipurpose ballistic protection which, in the passive state, is an additional armour and in the unfolded state increases buoyancy lost in the case of setting additional devices or armament. In the paper, initial simulations developed with the use of Ls-Dyna software are described. The influence of modules number of the air cushion on the buoyancy of the multi-purpose ballistic protection is considered. The advantage of the solution is possibility of the chamber volume change which causes the increase of device volume of the whole module of the chambers is dependent on the vehicle buoyancy which results from its current weight.