Investigation on a power coupling steering system for dual-motor drive tracked vehicles based on speed control

Double-motor drive tracked vehicles (2MDTV) are widely used in the tracked vehicle industry due to the development of electric vehicle drive systems. The aim of this paper is to solve the problem of insufficient propulsion motor torque in low-speed, small-radius steering and insufficient power in high-speed large-radius steering. In order to do this a new type of steering system with a coupling device is designed and a closed-loop control strategy based on speed is adopted to improve the lateral stability of the vehicle. The work done entails modeling and simulating the 2MDTV and the proposed control strategy in RecurDyn and Matlab/Simulink. The simulation results show that the 2MDTV with the coupling device outputs more torque and power in both steering cases compared to the 2MDTV without the coupling device, and the steering stability of the vehicle is improved by using the strategy based on speed.