Abstract
In this study, a series of soil bin experiment was carried out to investigate experimentally the effect of the tire inflation pressure and axle load of tire on the steering torque for the off-road condition. The experiment was performed at the three levels of off-road conditions(ground I, ground II and ground III) and on-road condition(ground IV), four levels of tire inflation pressure(120 kPa, 170 kPa, 220 kPa and 270 kPa), and four levels of axle load(1470N, 1960N, 2450N and 2940N). The results of this study are summarized as follows: 1. Steering torque at the off-road conditions were higher than that on the on-road conditions for all levels of tire inflation pressure and axle load. 2. As the axle load increased, steering torque also increased f3r all experimental ground conditions. 3. For the axle load of 1470N the biggest steering torque was measured on the ground condition I, but as the axle load increased to the value of 2940N the biggest steering torque was measured on the ground condition III. From the above results, it was found that for the low axle load, steering torque gets higher on the soft ground condition, but for the high axle load, steering torque gets higher on hard ground condition for whole range of experimental conditions. 4. As the tire inflation pressure decreased, steering torque increased on the on-road condition, but no specific trend was not found at the off-road conditions.
