Development of Control Systems for Screw Propellers

Abstract

Nowadays, a need arises more and more often to develop new hard-to-rich areas, which place a demand on special properties of machinery—first of all, such as cross-country capacity, maneuverability, and remote-control. A rotary screw all-terrain vehicle (ATV) is a high-passability terrestrial vehicle for off-road driving. The paper solves the problem of reducing overall dimensions of a propeller, which drives a rotary screw ATV; design variations of screw propellers with their motor fitted inside are proposed. Three types of propellers were designed: with a variable-speed motor, a stepper motor, and bicycle wheel-motor. The main design feature of such propellers is a motor within the propeller remaining stationary while a hollow body of revolution with a helical spiral ribbon, becoming a movable structural element. The description and analysis of special control systems as well as the principles of selecting individual units of the system are given. Logic control circuits for stepper and variable-speed motors were developed. Step-pulse systems with spiral motors on stepper drives allow constructing compact snow-and-swamp-mobiles with their lifting capacities higher (at least by 1.5–2 times) than those of similar vehicles with pulse-counting systems or spiral motors on bicycle wheel-motors.