抄録
Soil-vehicle interaction is one of the important factors for predicting trafficability of off-road vehicles. Tractive forces on the wheel surface to drive the vehicle can be estimated by soil deformation analysis around the contact area. Sand deformation and flow under a rolling and traveling wheel were observed by 2-dimensional PIV method from the side view through a transparent acrylic wall. The flow velocities of sand particles obtained on spatially allocated grids reveal that the fluctuations of sand flow make wave patterns on the sand surface after the wheel passed over. The finite element method was also conducted to simulate the traveling wheel experiment to discuss the possibility of the numerical simulation. The result of simulation qualitatively reproduced the experiment.
