A Compliant Double Pin Track Link Model for Multibody Tracked Vehicles

Abstract

Abstract It is the objective of this investigation to develop compliant double pin track link models and investigate the use of these models in the dynamic analysis of high mobility tracked vehicles. There are two major difficulties encountered in developing the compliant track models discussed in this paper. The first is due to the fact that 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 forces and the use of stiff compliant elements to represent the joints between the track links. The characteristics of the compliant, elements used in this investigation to describe the track joints are measured experimentally. The second difficulty encountered in this investigation is due to the large number of the system equations of motion of the three dimensional multibody tracked vehicle model. The dimensionality problem is solved by decoupling the equations of motion of the chassis subsystem and the track subsystems. Recursive methods are used to obtain a minimum set of equations for the chassis subsystem. Several simulation scenarios including an accelerated motion, high speed motion, braking, and turning motion of the high mobility vehicle are tested in order to demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the methods proposed in this investigation.