Tire mobility numbers and vehicles performance evaluation based on empirical approaches

Abstract

The wheel mobility number is a dimension less parameter that has a great and effective influence on prediction the off-road wheeled vehicle’s performance. The wheel mobility number is affected by soil strength, vehicle’s weight, and tires geometry. Different types of published wheel mobility numbers were collected and theoretically investigated to compare their vehicle performance. The major goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of tires parameters on vehicle mobility. For this, the tire geometry was measured using experimental testing at various tires inflation pressures. A theoretical comparison is carried out to the investigate the effect of soil cone index, tire geometry and vehicle weight on mobility numbers. The theoretical results are arranged in three worked zones and the vehicle performance in terms of net traction and tractive efficiency using empirical approaches were predicted. A comparison between predicted results and published results gives a good correlation.