FIELD MEASUREMENT OF TENSION IN A T-142 TANK TRACK

Abstract

This paper describes a method employed by the Engineering Measurements Section at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to measure the tension developed between neighboring track sections of a T-142-track mounted on an M-60 tank at the Yuma Proving Grounds. Such information is important for input to the computer models that are being developed by the laboratory for the US Army Tank-Automotive Command. A section of track was instrumented with strain gages and mounted in a tensile testing machine. The strain gage output was then calibrated as a function of tension. The calibrated track section was mounted on the tank and connected through a hard-wire electrical tether to a portable data acquisition system. A video recording system with a clock common to the data acquisition system was used to correlate environmental inputs to tension data. Initial track pre-tension levles were measured. Data were also acquired when the tank traversed several objects, moved uphill over an obstacle, and executed pivot turns. This data have been used in the new computer models at LLNL.