Three-dimensional multibody tracked vehicle modeling and simulation

Off-road vehicles have broad areas of application (in agriculture, in the construction industry, in the transport industry, in the military, in the U.S. space programs, in the oil and gas industry). A large segment of the off-road vehicles is made up by the tracked vehicles. The purpose of this study is to develop and implement an independent vehicle model. The vehicle model is general, in the sense that it is not restricted to a specific vehicle; it can model vehicles with varying numbers of road wheels, or different suspension characteristics It can be used, together with a track model, to analyze several types of tracked vehicles. A recursive dynamics formulation approach is used to model the vehicle. All the computations are performed in relative coordinates. The kinematic formulation of the model is presented, as well as the dynamic analysis, including the external and the internal applied forces. Dynamic settling simulations of the vehicle model on several types of soil are presented. The vehicle model presented in this study serves as a support, to help testing and comparing different track models and track-terrain interaction formulations