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Kersti Vennik, Priit Põdersalu, Tamur Kusnets, and Tõnu Tõnutare
Military maneuvers performed with different types of vehicles often happen outside of the road network. Essentially, areas trafficked by tracked and wheeled machinery can be divided as arable land and natural areas, depending on the impact of human activity. The latter type typically includes natural grasslands, forest and swamp areas. From the perspective of soil strength, the main difference between these land types lies in the compaction state. Compared to natural grasslands, cultivated fields are in a precompacted state. The most well-known mobility performance parameter for military vehicles is the Vehicle Cone Index (VCI). In short, this entails the minimum soil strength required for a successful passage, whereas the soil’s shear strength is determined with a cone penetrometer. There are many reports and scientific papers describing trafficability experiments and validation of VCI as a Go/No-Go indicator for different soils and vehicles. However, the majority of the test results concern natural grassland areas while the applicability of the VCI calculation concept for agriculturally used areas is lacking. The aim of this study is to carry out trafficability tests with wheeled military trucks in order to validate VCI as a mobility performance parameter for cultivated fields. Moreover, changes in soil strength and moisture conditions were monitored for selected field parcels throughout the warmer half of the year. The 70 kN and 125 kN military trucks were used as test vehicles. The soils under observation included sandy loam and clay textures as well as highly organic soils. The paper provides an overview of the experiment’s results and a discussion about trafficability conditions on cultivated areas.
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