3649 / Modeling The Resistive Forces On Vehicles In Deep Snow

Authors

Micah M. Borrero and Orian Welling

Paper presented at ISTVS 2024 | 21st International and 12th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of the ISTVS Keywords: Mobility Modeling; Deep Snow; Off-Road; Snow Compression; Drag; Plowing https://doi.org/10.56884/FIELAS8S

Abstract

The ability to determine whether a vehicle can traverse a particular winter surface is crucial for planning and executing successful off-road operations in cold regions environments. Various works have detailed strategies and improvements to vehicle mobility models snow and ice surfaces, and others have proposed initial methods to estimate the forces required for vehicles to travel through deep snow exceeding the height of the vehicle bumper or undercarriage These methods demonstrate a strong correlation between their approach and measurements examined in the field. However, they lack sufficient field-based measurements in varied snow conditions to fully capture real-world force estimates. In this paper, we build upon prior work to develop a preliminary model with the ability to estimate the resistive forces acting on a vehicle traveling through deep snow. We draw upon a wide range of disciplines, discussing the strength of a model based on the present knowledge of snow compression against a methodology based on fluid dynamics techniques. Both models exhibit promising results. However, these results demonstrate a stronger positive correlation using the snow compression model when compared with field-based measurements taken over a variety of winter seasons. These measurements were obtained using a purpose-built plowing apparatus, which simulated a range of bumper ride heights and profiles.

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