Study on the Track Wheeled Vehicle Designing for Off-Road Operations on Snowy and Wet Terrains

Abstract

Abstract Off-road vehicle trafficking is of interesting subjects for agricultural, mining and civil engineering purposes. The traversing over snowy and wet terrain is of greater importance regarding the sinkage and terrain properties. The motion resistance, traction, sinkage, and vehicle stability are functions of wheel-terrain interactions and particularly the contact patch characteristics. As adoption of wheeled vehicles on snowy terrain is difficult, tracked wheel vehicles are of greater interest and applicability. In this paper, the designing and analysis of tracked wheel system mounted on a light weight all-terrain vehicle (ATV) is addressed. The designing considerations are based on semi-empirical models (Bekker and Mohr-Coulomb criterion) and experimentally obtained data on the snow mechanical properties for the test region. Based on the analysis, it is observed that the greatest value of total deformation for the front and rear chasses are obtained at 0.00028485 and 0.00026229 m, respectively. The von Mises yield criterion addresses that the yielding of materials starts when the second deviatoric stress invariant gets to a critical value close to failure. Furthermore, the greatest values of von Mises stress for the front and rear tracked wheel chassis are equal to 64.60 and 62.48 MPa, respectively. The similarity is that the critical point is situated at the coincidence point between the inclined and longitudinally oriented rods (joint point). It is concluded that the developed vehicle could serve as a functional vehicle to perform on different off-road operational condition particularly wet terrains.