A new dynamic testing system for wheel-soil interactions

The vehicle trafficability on soft terrain is a key part of the overall vehicle performance. The field investigation and analysis show that lots of research has been done with no general theoretical law. The lack of real vehicle testing data holds back the development of wheel-soil interaction models to a great extent. A new dynamic testing system is presented in this paper to provide a solution for the scarce field testing data. A representative interaction model is introduced to make a brief description of the research problem and indicate the important variables involved. The testing system is based on an integrated real-time acquisition system, which consists of wheel force transducer, GPS, wheel speed sensor, digital camera, cone index penetrometer and watercutmeter. In preliminary field tests, various vehicle maneuvers were executed on rigid road for the validation of the validity, reliability and accuracy of the whole system. Finally, the vehicle equipped with the testing system was tested on kinds of soft terrain. The result shows a good indication of the capacity and potential of the system in the research of the wheel-soil interactions.