TEAM

  The skirt is one of the most important part of a hovercraft as it is the part that allows the hovercraft to clear the obstacles. Generally speaking the higher the skirt, the larger the obstacles that the craft will clear. However, if the skirt is too tall, the craft will ‘slide off’ the cushion and the cushion will deflate or the craft will become extremely unstable.     All modern hovercraft large and small- use a skirt of one sort or another for their suspension system so that the power required to lift the craft can be minimized.

    The hovercraft concept itself depends upon fabrication of skirt, without which the name 'AIR CUSHION' may not be a relevant word. It is a vehicle that completely propels over a bed of air. If the   fabrication of skirt is not proper then the amount of DRAG, FRICTION will be more, so that fuel consumption increases & is not economical. Since in a hovercraft you can not find a rotating wheel as you find in a automobile vehicle, so the amount of air cushion that is generated should be optimum, such that whole vehicle will float over it.

   As  we described above & to fulfill the above requirement we gave a lot of importance while fabricating skirt. Definitely we were in a confusion to fabricate skirt arrangement, because it needed development of a profile. Finally we decided to download the profile from the internet. After we got the profile from the net & we developed the  profile on a sheet of paper. According to this dimension we fabricated the skirt arrangement.    

  After developing the profile we fixed the skirt around the perimeter of the hull (upper position) by screws & the other end is connected to oblique portion of the hull ( (lower position) by screws . The gap between the hull & skirt was filled with silicone sealant, so escapement of air was prevented. A loop was formed in between the upper & lower position of the hull.