Analysis of Steering Performance for Wheel-Track Composite Vehicle Based on New Differential Steering Mechanism

Abstract

To solve the complicated steering control of small vehicles in the agriculture and difficult steering on complex roads, this study designed a wheel-track composite vehicle. The vehicle incorporated a novel power differential steering mechanism with dual driving, enabling steering through the differential rotation of the rear two wheels. The vehicle is simple to control, small in size, and is able to work under the conditions of complex roads, such as hills, mountains, and muddy land. The study initially focused on presenting the design, theoretical analysis, and dynamic simulation analysis of the power differential steering mechanism with dual driving. Subsequently, the vehicle underwent modeling and simulation using UG software to validate the reasonability of the values. Finally, utilizing test data, four mathematical models for the actual steering radius of the vehicle on four road surfaces were derived through neural network fitting. The maximum relative error between the model results and the actual steering radius value was reported to be 3.53%. The advantages of the vehicle included continuous radius steering, deceleration and torsion increase, differential lock, etc. This made it well-suited for applications in all-terrain military and civilian vehicles, as well as various special equipment mobile platforms equipped with walking devices.