Dynamics of a "Hamster Wheel" Test Bench

Abstract

Ground tests of vehicles such as cars and tractors, including life tests and functional tests, are expensive and time-consuming. We propose to replace them with relatively inexpensive time-saving tests using a "hamster wheel" test bench. The vehicle inside a rotating ring remains at rest relative to the ground but in motion relative to the inner surface of the ring. This surface can be equipped with artificial obstacles to simulate actual road irregularities. We constructed differential equations of motion for the system and established the nature of the relative motion involving the outer ring and the test object, taking into account resonance phenomena and possible self-oscillations. We selected a disk simulating a vehicle wheel as our computational scheme. We studied the probability that self-oscillations appear in the system and determined their amplitude. We performed a qualitative assessment of possible dynamic effects. The paper proposes a system for arranging artificial obstacles on the inner surface of the wheel to simulate road bumps in terms of statistics.