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The paper includes a description of a rotating wheel dynamometer developed for off-road testing of military vehicles. The purpose of the dynamometer is to measure all three forces and moments acting on a wheel at the same time. The dynamometer was designed as an autonomous measuring device, with on-board data acquisition system and power supply. Application of the dynamometer for testing of a vehicle requires only minor modifications of the wheel rim and the use of a wheel hub adapter. The device was designed for wheeled vehicles of weights ranging from 1.5 to 6 tonne. The dynamometer was installed on two different vehicles: a 1.6-tone SUV and a 5-tonne armored personal carrier. The paper contains detailed descriptions of the design and development as well as sample results from early road and off-road tests. Two of the advantages of the dynamometer over the existing, commercially available solutions are its low cost and versatility.

The paper describes a field experiment on the lateral dynamics of a light sport utility vehicle (SUV), driven over two different deformable surfaces (sand and loess). The vehicle was equipped with a steering robot, four wheel dynamometers, and a differential global positioning system (DGPS). The main purpose of this study was to determine (1) tire lateral forces on steered wheels of the vehicle and (2) vehicle response to two different methods for the steering angle excitation: a sine wave and a ramp change. The steering robot installed in the vehicle allowed us to perform tests with various parameters (sine wave at 0.5, 1.0 and 2.5 Hz, ramp change at 100, 500 and 1500 deg/s) and to repeat the tests as needed for further analysis of the data (the so called “open loop”).