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Track assemblies are widely used to reduce vehicles’ ground pressure and improve their off-road performance. During off-road, the track tension has a significant effect on the performance of the crawler driving system. Previous control strategies only make use of the motions of partial road wheels. This paper develops a logical improvement to govern the motion of the track tensioner by using all road wheels. First, a dynamic model of the hydraulic-mechanism coupling system is established using the transfer matrix method for multibody systems and pressure-flow equations. Then, in order to get the angle of the idler arm, a modeling method of wheel envelope perimeter is developed, which is based on the locations of all wheels. Simulation results indicate that the control system maintains the wheel envelope perimeter almost constant while road wheels swing and decrease the possibility of peel-off and breakage of the track. It alleviates the track repeated stretch and keeps the tension in a stable range to reduce the fatigue damage. The control strategy can effectively reduce the peak value of the upper track tension during a vehicle passing through obstacles. This study suggests that the active track tensioning system can be implemented to improve the driving properties of tracked vehicles.

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A crawler system provides much larger ground contact, leading to excellent terrain adaptability. Due to its structural characteristics, high-frequency vibration proportional to the vehicle speed is generated during the driving process. This is a result of the polygon and rolling effects between the track and the wheels. A field test of a tracked vehicle is performed to monitor movement signals of the chassis and a rocker arm. Their corresponding power spectral density distributions confirm the correctness of the frequency-calculation equation. Then, a novel elastic track tensioning device with a damper is designed as a cushion between the idler and the chassis. Depending on its geometry, the equivalent damping coefficient for a dynamic model is evaluated.Subsequently, the damping is altered in response to different operating conditions by a hybrid damping fuzzy semiactive control system. The controller accounts for both chassis and track vibration. Based on the transfer matrix method for multibody systems, a dynamical model of the track system is developed. Control performances are evaluated using two numerical simulations of obstacle crossing and off-road driving operations. Results indicate that the proposed semiactive tensioner is substantially better than the conventional one. This paper provides a novel feasible scheme for vibration reduction of tracked vehicles.