A Study on the Steering Performance and Turning Radius of Four-Rows Tracked Vehicle on Hard Ground

Abstract

This study proposes a method to determine the effective angular velocity of each motor of a specific four-rows tracked vehicle (FRTV) in order to follow a given turning radius. The configuration of the four-rows tracked vehicle is introduced, and its dynamics analysis model is built using the DAFUL commercial software. The soil has been assumed to be hard ground, and the friction force between the ground and the tracked links is calculated using the Coulomb friction model. This paper uses a simulation to show that the error in the position increased with respect to the angle of the curvatures, so a method is proposed to compensate for the error in the motion of the motors. Various simulations are then carried out to verify the proposed formulation. The effects of the soil characteristics and the driving velocity will be further investigated in future studies.