Dynamic analysis of tracked vehicle by buoy characteristics

Abstract

This paper focuses on the dynamic responses of a tracked vehicle crawling on extremely cohesive soft soil, each side of which is composed of two parallel tracks. The tracked vehicle consisted of 2 bodies. One body is the tracked vehicle body, which is assumed to be a rigid body with 6 DOFs. The other body is the buoy body. The two bodies are connected by a revolute joint. In order to evaluate the travelling performance of a 7 DOFs vehicle, a dynamic analysis program for the tracked vehicle was developed using Newmark’s method and the incremental-iterative method. The effects of road wheels on the track and soil are not taken into account. A terra-mechanics model of extremely cohesive soft soil is implemented in form of relationships: normal pressure to sinkage, shear resistance to shear displacement, and dynamic sinkage to shear displacement. Pressure-sinkage relationship and shear displacement-stress relationship should represent the non-linear characteristics of extremely soft soil. Especially, since the shear resistance of soft soil is very sensitive to shear displacement, spatial distribution of shear displacement occurring at the contact area of the tracks should be calculated precisely. The proposed program is developed in FORTRAN. ？ 2014, Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute. All rights reserved.