SA E TECHNICAL PAPER SERIES A Low Cost Tracked Vehicle Steering System Design Providing Pivot Turning and Infinitely Variable Turning Radius Herbert H. Dobbs and Vernon E. Gleasman S. G. T. International Corp. Colin K. Drummond SEACO, Inc. eA The Engineering Sociely For Advancing Mobility Land Sea Air and Space, JYrC International Truck and Bus Meeting and Exposition Toledo, Ohio November 16-1 9,1992 -- ~ 400 COMMONWEALTH DRIVE, WARRENDALE, PA 15096-0001 U.S.A. Downloaded from SAE International by North Carolina State Univ, Saturday, September 15, 2018The appearance of the ISSN code at the bottom of this page indicates SAE's consent that copies of the paper may be made for personal or internal use of specificclients. This consent is given on thecondition, however, that the copier pay a $5.00 per article copy fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Operations Center,.27 Congress St., Salem. MA 01970 for copying beyond that permitted by Sections 107 or 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law. This consent does not extend to other kinds of copying such as copying for general distribution, for advertising or promotional purposes, for creating new collective works, or for resale. SAE routinely stocks printed papers for a period of three years following date of publication. Direct your orders to SAE Customer Service Department. To obtain quantity reprint rates, permission to reprint a technical paper or permission to use copyrighted SAE publications in other works, contact the SAE Publications Group. All SAE papers, standards, and selected books are abstracted and indexed in the SAE Global Mobil~ty Database. No part of this publication may by reproduced in any form, in an electronic retrieval system or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISSN 0148-7191 Copyright 1992 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. Positions and opinions advanced in this paper are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of SAE. The author is solely responsible for the content of the paper. A process is available by which discussions will be printed with the paper if it is published in SAE transactions. For permission to publish this paper in full or in part, contact the SAE Publications Division. Persons wishing to submit papers to be considered for presentation or publication through SAE should send the manuscript or a 300 word abstract of a proposed manuscript to: Secretary, Engineering Activity Board, SAE. Printed in USA Downloaded from SAE International by North Carolina State Univ, Saturday, September 15, 2018A Low Cost Tracked Vehicle Steering System Design Providing Pivot ~urning and Infinitely Variable Turning Radius Herbert H. Dobbs and Vernon E. Gleasman S. G. T. International Corp. Colin K. Drummond SEACO, Inc. ABSTRACT Tracked vehicles offer many advantages off road in difficult terrain. A primary factor limiting their application, however, has been pmviding a capable steering system at reasonable cost. This problem has been solved in high speed military tracked vehi- cles where cost is not the dominant factor. Now a new tracked vehicle steering unit has been developed which provides the same per- formance as the most advanced military s ys- terns, but which is manufactured economi- cally from standard automotive components. This can be matched with standard engines and transmissions to give vehicle perform- ance which formerly could not be obtained at a commercially acceptable price. DEWEUPMElW OF THE STEER DFtIVE discussed in this paper has focused on a hardware demon- s tration of its functionality and practical- ity. While essent.ia1 engineering analysis was of course done in designing and building the test hardware, only a very limited amount of bench testing was done before installing the unit on a vehicle testbed. The use of proven commercial components eliminated most of the uncertainties usual to the develop- ment of a new de