A study on the steering characteristics of tandem tracked vehicle on extremely cohesive soft soil

Abstract

The principal objective of this paper was to evaluate the steering characteristics of a tandem tracked vehicle, each side of which features two tandem tracks, when crawling on extremely cohesive soft soil. The tandem tracked vehicle is assumed to be a rigid-body with 6-dof. The dynamic analysis program of the tandem tracked vehicle was developed via Newmark's method and the incremental-iterative method. A terra-mechanics model of extremely cohesive soft soil was implemented according to the relationships of normal pressure to sinkage, of shear resistance to shear displacement, and of dynamic sinkage to shear displacement. In order to simplify the characteristics of contact interaction between track segments and cohesive soft soil, the characteristics of soil are equated to the properties of intact soil. In an effort to evaluate the steering characteristics of a tandem tracked vehicle crawling on extremely cohesive soft soil, a series of dynamic simulations were conducted for a tandem tracked vehicle model with respect to the front and rear steering angle, the steering ratio, and the initial velocity.