Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : May 10, 2017 - May 13, 2017
A mobility analysis of off-road vehicle running on sandy terrain has been well investigated in Terramechanics, in which stress distribution generated around the wheel-terrain contact patch is a fundamental model to calculate wheel traction performance. However, classical models have mainly focused on heavy-weight vehicle and they have not been well verified whether these models are directly applicable to lightweight vehicles. This paper presents an experimental measurement of a stress distribution of a rigid wheel on sandy terrain. In this work, an in-wheel sensor that is capable of measuring normal and shear stresses is developed. The wheel stress distribution is then measured under different slip ratio controlled by a single wheel test bench. Here, the particle image velocimetry is also employed to capture a sand flow at the wheel-sand contact patch. The experimental results have revealed that the classical model would not be suitable for a lightweight wheel in certain slip conditions.
