The Multi-Body Dynamic Analysis of High-Mobility Tracked Vehicle on Different Ground Friction Conditions

Several modelling methods had recently been developed for the dynamic analysis of tracked vehicles. These methods are used demonstrate the significant force effects of the interaction between the track links and vehicle components. There are two major difficulties encountered in developing the compliant track models discussed in this paper. The first problem is due to the integration step size must be kept small in order to maintain the numerical stability of the solution. This solution includes high oscillatory signals resulting from the impulsive contact force and the use of stiff compliant elements to present the joints between the track links. The characteristics of the compliant elements use in this paper to describe the track joints were measured experimentally. A numerical method having a relatively large stability region is employed in order to maintain the solution accuracy, and a variable step size integration algorithm is used in order to improve the efficiency. The second difficulty encountered in this paper is due to the large number of the system equation of motion of three-dimensional multi-body high-mobility tracked vehicles model. The dimensionality problem is solved by decoupling the equations of motion of chassis and track subsystems. Recursive method is used to obtain a minimum set of equations for the chassis subsystem. Several ground friction simulation scenarios including an accelerated motion, high-speed motion, braking, and turning motion of high-mobility vehicle are tested and verified in order to demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the methods proposed in this paper.