Abstract
In this paper, track tension estimation methods are developed for tracked vehicles which are subject to various maneuvering tasks such as longitudinal driving on sloping and/or rough roads. The information of the track tension is very important for the tracked vehicles because the track tension is closely related to the maneuverability and the durability of the tracked vehicles. A modified 3 DOF dynamics model is derived for the tracked vehicles and is utilized for estimating the tractive force and track tension for the longitudinal driving case. The tension estimation performance of the proposed methods is verified through the simulation of the Multi-body Dynamics tool. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method under various maneuvering tasks of the tracked vehicles.