Abstract
The role of the suspension system in tracked vehicles cannot be overestimated because the driving and running conditions of such vehicles are very severe. It reduces the vibration and shock that are generated by road profile in running conditions. As the tracked vehicle's running speed increases, undesired vibration could be intensified by the road profile particularly in the case of field running. Because excessive vibration can harm the operational ability of crewmen and stability of complex equipments, the maximum running speed is limited. In this study, we examined the feasibility of the preview control to improve the performance of the tracked vehicle system. We proposed a method to apply a linear optimal preview control to the tracked vehicle system. To avoid the complexity of modeling the track subsystem and kinematical nonlinearity in the trailing arm suspension system, we classified these as unknown dynamics and disturbances. We used the Time Delay Control (TDC) method to make sprung mass dynamics follow that of the linear preview controlled tracked vehicle model by compensating the uncertainties and disturbances. We have verified by computer simulation that the proposed method shows good robustness to modeling uncertainty including the case when the unsprung mass is assumed to be twice heavier than the model parameters. We have demonstrated the feasibility of the preview control of the tracked vehicle.
