Traffic performance of a rubber-tracked vehicle travelling up and down a sloped pavement

The tractive and braking performances of a 40 kN rubber-tracked vehicle travelling up and down a sloped pavement depend on the grouser shape. The purpose of this paper is to find the most suitable grouser shape to obtain the maximum optimum effective tractive effort and the maximum optimum effective braking force and to clarify the several traffic performances of the vehicle travelling up and down sloped concrete and asphalt paved roads. As results, it is verified that the most suitable shape of rubber grouser is an equilateral trapezoid type of contact length 3 cm for concrete pavement and another of contact length 5 cm for asphalt pavement, respectively, and that the effective tractive effort and the effective braking force decrease with the increment of slope angle.