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Alexandru Vilsan, Nikhil Ravichandran, Chaitanya Sonalkar, and Corina Sandu
The distribution of normal stress within soil plays an important role in determining the tire-soil interaction dynamics, affecting tire traction performance, soil compaction, and overall vehicle stability. A comprehensive analysis of the normal stress patterns will allow researchers to refine tire designs, tread characteristics, and inflation pressures for enhanced off-road performance across diverse terrains. This study presents a novel soil instrumentation device designed to measure normal stress distribution in soil following a single pass of an off-road tire. The developed device employs an array of piezoresistive vertical load sensors for providing real-time, accurate data of normal stress distribution beneath the tire during operation. Several tire-soil interaction tests were performed at the Virginia Tech Terramechanics Test Rig to verify the output of the load sensors. The sensor array was embedded in GRC-1 Lunar Soil Simulant at a depth of 150 mm while an off-road tire loaded with a vertical force of 2000 N traversed over the surface of the terrain. The results obtained showed significant differences in pressure patterns under different toe angles, indicating a good correlation between the actual normal stress distribution and the readings from the sensor array.
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