Propagation of nonlinearities in the inertia matrix of tracked vehicles

In this investigation, a procedure is presented for the numerical solution of tracked vehicle dynamics equations of motion. Tracked vehicles can be represented as two kinematically decoupled subsystems. The first is the chasis subsystem which consists of chasis, rollers, idlers, and sprockets. The second is the track subsystem which consists of track links interconnected by revolute joints. While there is dynamic force coupling between these two subsystems, there is no inertia coupling since the kinematic equations of the two subsystems are not coupled. The objective of the procedure developed in this investigation is to take advantage of the fact that in many applications, the shape of the track does not significantly change even though the track links undergo significant configurations changes. In such cases the nonlinearities propagate along the diagonals of a velocity influence coefficient matrix. This matrix is the only source of nonlinearities in the generalized inertia matrix. A permutation matrix is introduced to minimize the number of generalized inertia matrix LU factor evaluations for the track.