Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Keywords: Tracked Vehicle, Modelling, Simulation, possible to control the steer input to achieve any radius of
Handling, Stability. curvature between straight ahead and an upper limit (tightest
turn). With older skid steered vehicle there is commonly only
Abstract one (and unusually two) fixed steer ratio for each of the gears.
Thus at high speed in a particular gear it is possible to initiate
In this work a six degree of freedom tracked vehicle model is a turn, which is too severe for the given conditions. One of
developed, with longitudinal, lateral, bounce, roll, pitch and the other problems applicable to both old and new vehicle
yaw motions of the hull. A suspension system is incorporated transmissions is that if a bend is approached in too high a
into the model, which allows the forces on the vehicle hull gear, then there may be insufficient steer ratio to get round the
and between the track and ground to be determined. The bend (running wide) requiring one or more downward gear
model is validated using data from a steady state handling shifts. An introduction to tracked vehicle steering for both the
trial that was undertaken on a Combat Vehicle low and high-speed case is given in [4,5].
Reconnaissance (Tracked) CVR(T). From simulations of the In the study presented here a six degree of freedom model
model it is shown that the stability of the vehicle reduces as of a tracked vehicle, Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance
the speed increases and on low friction surfaces. (Tracked) CVR(T), is developed. A CVR(T) is a low mass,
approximately 10,000 kg, military tracked vehicle shown in
Figure 1. This vehicle has five wheel stations, which have
1 Introduction torsion bar suspension system utilising trailing arms and
dampers on the first and last wheel stations only. Damping on
The majority of tracked vehicles operated by the military are the inner wheel stations being parasitic caused by the rotation
capable of travelling at relatively high speed, over 80 km/h in of the trailing arms in their bearings.
some cases. The possibility of this high speed, the nature of The steering system employed in the CVR(T) is of a fixed
the steering system and the inexperience of the drivers results ratio type in each gear, Table 1. The model developed is
in a number of accidents each year. The size and weight of partially validated against a steady state handling data
military tracked vehicles, greater than 60,000 kg for the presented in [4], for third gear up to a lateral acceleration
British Challenger 2 main battle tank, can result in significant (latac) of about 0.34g.
amounts of damage and personal injury when an accident The model is used to investigate the motion of the hull
does occur. during cornering on low friction surfaces and at different
The vast majority of high-speed military tracked vehicles speeds.
employ skid steering to change their direction. The mechanics
of skid steering are complex and the resulting equations are
sufficiently non-linear to prevent linearisation techniques
being applied successfully. Thus, the fundamental handling
characteristics of tracked vehicle are significantly more
difficult to establish theoretically than for wheeled vehicles
[1-6]. The reason for this greater complexity is the sliding
(skidding) interface between the track and ground, which
occurs during turning. To simplify this most of the workers in
this field have assumed a hard level surface for the
investigation [1-6].
When a skid steer tracked vehicle is in a steady turn the
outer track sprocket is rotating faster than the inner. The ratio
of the outer to the inner sprocket angular speed is called the
steer ratio, n and is analogous to the steer angle of the front
wheels of a wheeled vehicle. For modern tracked vehicles, for Figure 1. Photograph of CVR(T).
example the British Challenger 2 and Warrior the steer ratio
can be varied infinitely between two limits [7], thus it is
Gear Max Speed m/s# Steer Ratio n Turn Radius* m A top level simulation diagram of the vehicle model is
shown in Figure 3. The transmission model is assumed to
1 1.11 7.2 1.71
consist of a first order lags with time constants of 1.0 second
2 2.50 2.1 3.84 acting between the commands from the driver and the
3 3.61 1.6 (1.69◊) 5.33 sprocket output. The external forces, which are not used in
this investigation, are to allow the affect of forces other than
4 5.83 1.32 8.9 through the tracks to be included, for example; aerodynamic,
5 10.55 1.18 16.06 towing or gravity when on an incline. The next three
subsection will describe the models for the; suspension, hull
6 14.61 1.14 21.28
and tracks.
7 21.66 1.09 33.22
Table 1. CVR(T) steering data, *manufacturer’s data,
◊experimentally determined, #estimated.
5 Conclusion
In this work a six degree of freedom tracked vehicle model
for a CVR(T) has been developed and validated against
steady state handling data.
It was shown that at low latac the vehicle initially understeers
before going into oversteer at higher latac.
It has been demonstrated by simulation that the vehicle
becomes less stable at higher speed and on low friction
surfaces.
References
[1] Thai, T. D. and Muro, T., Numerical analysis to
predict turning characteristics of rigid suspension tracked
vehicles, J. of Terramechanics 36, 1999, pp 183-196.
[2] Merritt, H. E., Some considerations influencing the
design of high-speed track-vehicles, The Institution of
Automobile Engineers, January 1939, pp 398-429.
[3] Steeds, W., Tracked vehicles – an analysis of the
factors involved in steering, Automobile Engineer, April
1950, pp 143-148.
[4] Purdy, D. J. and Wormell, P. J. H., Handling of High-
Speed Tracked Vehicles, J. Battlefield Tech. Vol. 6, No. 2,
July 2003.
[5] Wormell, P. J. H. and Purdy, D. J., Handling of
Tracked Vehicles at Low Speed, J. Battlefield Tech. Vol. 7,
No. 1, March 2004.
[6] Kitano, M. and Kuma, M., An analysis of horizontal
plane motion of tracked vehicles, J. of Terramechanics, Vol.
44, No. 4, 1977, pp 211-225.
[7] McGuigan, S. J. and Moss, P. J., A Review of
Transmission Systems for Tracked Military Vehicles, J.
Battlefield Tech. Vol. 1, No. 3, November 1998.
[8] Kwatny, H. G. and Blankenship, G. L, Nonlinear
Control and Analytical Mechanics: A Computational
Approach, Birkhauser, 2000, ISBN 0-8176-4147-5.