Simulation and Experimental Study on Steering Torque of Tracked Vehicles

Serious sideslip has a great impact on the driving safety of tracked vehicles, and also restricts the performance of tracked vehicles' maneuverability when the tracked vehicle turns at high speed under the off-road road. However, most of the existing researches focus on wheeled vehicles, but the track-ground pressure and steering mode of tracked vehicles are quite different from wheeled vehicles. In order to accurately analyze the steering load characteristics of tracked vehicles, it is urgent to build an accurate steering dynamics model to obtain the steering load characteristics. In this paper, the backward dynamic parametric model of tracked vehicle with longitudinal, lateral and yaw degrees of freedom was constructed based on the dynamics analysis of the vehicle and analysis of the track-ground pressure. The torque characteristics of the active wheel of tracked vehicle under the critical state of steering sideslip were investigated and verified by the real vehicle through the steering slip boundary constructed using the steering center offset method. The result shows that: when the vehicle is approaching the critical state of lateral slip, the outer driving wheel torque increases sharply, while the inner driving wheel torque gradually decreases from negative to zero and then rapidly increases. The dynamic model provides technical support for bench simulation experiments of tracked vehicles in a sideslip state. This paper establishes the mapping relationship between the critical state of steering slip of tracked vehicles and the active wheel torque, and reveals the changing law of the active wheel torque in the critical state of sideslip, which can provide data and technical support for the design of tracked vehicles and the control of steering sideslip.