The Arktos Craft can move through frigid temperatures as well as flames. Image: Arktos Craft
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When the amphibious vehicle, the Arktos Craft, is on the job - say evacuating a burning oil rig - it might move from Arctic temperatures through open flames within minutes.
The maker of the craft, Arktos Development, Ltd. of Surrey, British Columbia, was created in September 1993 as the manufacturing body for the high mobility amphibious craft known by the registered trademark of Arktos. The design and manufacture of Arktos Craft is a major focus of Arktos Developments.
The Arktos Craft navigating through ice.
Arktos called upon simulation software to continue to ensure the vehicle can operate in environmentally demanding locations from Alaska to the Caspian Sea, and its design partner, Valmont West Coast Engineering in Delta, British Columbia, used the software to gauge how thermal stress due to temperature extremes would combine with mechanical stress and affect the vessel's moving parts, said Bruce Seligman, Arktos's president.
Originally designed as an amphibious evacuation craft for Arctic offshore oil facilities, the Arktos Craft can move from frigid temperatures, through flames, and back again to the cold, as it would to evacuate a burning oil rig. It can also navigate ice-rubble fields, ice ridges, and open water—and can even climb up or down vertical steps, Seligman said.
Engineers use finite element analysis to study the craft.
The key to the craft's mobility is an articulated arm between the vessel's two main compartments. As the craft climbs up onto an ice shelf from the water, the hydraulics in that arm help push the front unit of the craft up out of the water so that the special track spikes can grab the ice.
Valmont, which provides finite element analysis services to Arktos Development, was responsible for predicting vehicle performance in severe environments and with showing Arktos engineers how thermal stress caused by temperature extremes would combine with mechanical stress within the articulated arm.
The Valmont engineers used Autodesk Simulation software from Autodesk of San Rafael, CA, to predict stresses.
Read the latest issue of Mechanical Engineering.
Originally designed as an amphibious evacuation craft for Arctic offshore oil facilities, the Arktos Craft can move from frigid temperatures, through flames, and back again to the cold.
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