Title: Dynamic behaviour of a trailing arm suspension unit of a tracked vehicle with flexible and rigid elements

Authors: Jothi Sundaram; Balamurugan Varadarajan; Malarmohan Keppanan

Addresses: Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment, Avadi, Chennai 600054, India ' Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment, Avadi, Chennai 600054, India ' AUFRG Institute for CAD/CAM, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Anna University, Chennai 600025, India

Abstract: The trailing arm suspension system is being widely used in off-road tracked vehicles. This paper compares the dynamics of a single trailing arm suspension unit of a tracked vehicle with flexible road wheel arm and rigid road wheel arm. Road wheel arm is an essential element connecting the chassis assembly and the road wheel assembly. In most research work, the trailing arm suspension is generally modelled as a spring with vertical stiffness and damping. In this study, the trailing arm suspension is modelled as a combination of sprung mass, torsion spring, road wheel arm and road wheel assembly. Moreover, the road wheel arm is modelled as a flexible body in one case and a rigid body in another case, so that the influence of including structural elasticity of the road wheel arm on the dynamic characteristics of the single trailing arm suspension unit can be studied using finite element analysis.

Keywords: tracked vehicle; trailing arm suspension; road wheel arm; flexible body; rigid body; sinusoidal terrain; structural flexibility; flexible body dynamics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2017.087234

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2017 Vol.24 No.4, pp.345 - 360

Received: 13 Oct 2015
Accepted: 27 Jul 2016

Published online: 11 Oct 2017 *

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