Design, Modeling and Virtual Validation of Mobility platform of Tracked Vehicle

Hull design of a tracked vehicle plays a critical role in the vehicle mobility, crew protection and combat performance. This work is intended to design a hull of 50 Ton tracked vehicle using conventional layout of suspension and running gear components. Driver compartment of hull is designed based upon driver height of 1.69m. Critical hull parameters such as angle of departure, location of 1st road wheel w.r.t idler wheel, location of last road wheel w.r.t sprocket and distribution of middle road wheels are calculated. Finally, designed hull is modeled in Pro/Engineer software and Recurdyn software is used to ascertain vehicle performance in various prototype tests. In the wake of scarcity of papers on this subject, this paper not only outlines the process of hull design for conventional tracked vehicles but also for unconventional ones such as autonomous tracked vehicles.