Search Results

Explore what’s next in the world of mobility by discovering the latest standards, technical advancements, professional development and networking opportunities here

Vehicle navigation in off-road environments is challenging due to terrain uncertainty. Various approaches that account for factors such as terrain trafficability, vehicle dynamics, and energy utilization have been investigated. However, these are not sufficient to ensure safe navigation of optionally manned ground vehicles that are prone to detection using thermal infrared (IR) seekers in combat missions. This work is directed towards the development of a vehicle IR signature aware navigation stack comprised of global and local planner modules to realize safe navigation for optionally manned ground vehicles. The global planner used A* search heuristics designed to find the optimal path that minimizes the vehicle thermal signature metric on the map of terrain’s apparent temperature. The local planner used a model-predictive control (MPC) algorithm to achieve integrated motion planning and control of the vehicle to follow the path waypoints provided by the global planner.

Abstract Introduction: The use of less lethal impact munitions (LLIMs) by law enforcement has increased in frequency, especially following nationwide protests regarding police brutality and racial injustice in the summer of 2020. There are several reports of the projectiles causing severe injuries when they penetrate the skin including pulmonary contusions, bone fractures, liver lacerations, and, in some cases, death. The penetration threshold of skin in different body regions is due to differences in the underlying structure (varying degree of muscle, adipose tissue, and presence or absence of bone). Objective: The objective of this study was to further investigate what factors affected the likelihood of skin penetration in various body regions and to develop corresponding penetration risk curves.

This SAE Recommended Practice provides minimum performance requirements and uniform laboratory procedures for fatigue testing of disc wheels, demountable rims, and bolt-together divided wheels intended for normal highway use on military trucks, buses, truck-trailers, and multipurpose vehicles. Users may establish design criteria exceeding the minimum performance requirement for added confidence in a design. For other (non-military) wheels and rims intended for normal highway use on trucks and buses, refer to SAE J267. For wheels intended for normal highway and temporary use on passenger cars, light trucks, and multipurpose vehicles, refer to SAE J328. For wheels used on trailers drawn by passenger cars, light trucks, or multipurpose vehicles, refer to SAE J1204. This document does not cover off-highway or other special application wheels and rims.

Traditional ground vehicle architectures comprise of a chassis connected via passive, semi-active, or active suspension systems to multiple ground wheels. Current design-optimizations of vehicle architectures for on-road applications have diminished their mobility and maneuverability in off-road settings. Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGV) traversing off-road environments face numerous challenges concerning terrain roughness, soil hardness, uneven obstacle-filled terrain, and varying traction conditions. Numerous Active Articulated-Wheeled (AAW) vehicle architectures have emerged to permit AGVs to adapt to variable terrain conditions in various off-road application arenas (off-road, construction, mining, and space robotics). However, a comprehensive framework of AAW platforms for exploring various facets of system architecture/design, analysis (kinematics/dynamics), and control (motions/forces) remains challenging.

The gear lubricants covered by this standard exceed American Petroleum Institute (API) Service Classification API GL-5 and are intended for hypoid-type, automotive gear units, operating under conditions of high-speed/shock load and low-speed/high-torque. These lubricants may be appropriate for other gear applications where the position of the shafts relative to each other and the type of gear flank contact involve a large percentage of sliding contact. Such applications typically require extreme pressure (EP) additives to prevent the adhesion and subsequent tearing away of material from the loaded gear flanks. These lubricants are not appropriate for the lubrication of worm gears. Appendix A is a mandatory part of this standard. The information contained in Appendix A is intended for the demonstration of compliance with the requirements of this standard and for listing on the Qualified Products List (QPL) administered by the Lubricant Review Institute (LRI).

Abstract The advancement in vision sensors and embedded technology created the opportunity in autonomous vehicles to look ahead in the future to avoid potential obstacles and steep regions to reach the target location as soon as possible and yet maintain vehicle safety from rollover. The present work focuses on developing a nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC) for a high-speed off-road autonomous vehicle, which avoids undesirable conditions including stationary obstacles, moving obstacles, and steep regions while maintaining the vehicle safety from rollover. The NMPC controller is developed using CasADi tools in the MATLAB environment. The CasADi tool provides a platform to formulate the NMPC problem using symbolic expressions, which is an easy and efficient way of solving the optimization problem. In the present work, the vehicle lateral dynamics are modeled using the Pacejka nonlinear tire model.

Abstract The objective of this article is to evaluate the effects of different blast protective modules to military vehicle structures and occupants. The dynamic responses of the V-shape integral basic armor, the add-on honeycomb sandwich structure module, and the anti-shock seat-dummy system were simulated and analyzed. The improvements of occupant survivability by different protective modules were compared using occupant injury criteria. The integral armored cab can maintain the integrity of the cab body structure. The add-on honeycomb sandwich armor reduces the peak structural deformation and velocity of the cab floor by 34.9% and 47.4%, respectively, compared with the cab with integral armors only. The integral armored cab with the anti-shock seat or the honeycomb sandwich structures reduces the occupant shock responses below the injury criteria. For different blast threat intensities, the selection of appropriate protective modules can meet protection requirements.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, improvised explosive devices were used strategically and with increasing frequency. To effectively design countermeasures for this environment, the Department of Defense identified the need for an under-body blast-specific Warrior Injury Assessment Manikin (WIAMan). To help with this design, information on Warfighter injuries in mounted under-body blast attacks was obtained from the Joint Trauma Analysis and Prevention of Injury in Combat program through their Request for Information interface. The events selected were evaluated by Department of the Army personnel to confirm they were representative of the loading environment expected for the WIAMan. A military case review was conducted for all AIS 2+ fractures with supporting radiology. In Warfighters whose injuries were reviewed, 79% had a foot, ankle or leg AIS 2+ fracture. Distal tibia, distal fibula, and calcaneus fractures were the most prevalent.

The EuroSID-2re (ES-2re) Anthropomorphic Test Device (ATD) commonly known as the crash test dummy is also used in the military domain to assess the risk of injury of armored vehicles occupants from lateral impact. The loading conditions range from low velocity - long duration impacts (4 m/s - 50 ms) similar to the automotive domain, to high velocity - short duration impacts (28 m/s - 3 ms) corresponding to cases where the panel deforms under an explosion. The human shoulder response to lateral impact was investigated at bounds of the loading condition spectrum previously mentioned, and also at intermediate conditions (14 m/s - 9 ms) in previous studies. The aim of the current study is to provide additional insight at the intermediate loading conditions which are not found in the literature.

Abstract - The Warrior Injury Assessment Manikin (WIAMan) was developed to assess injury in Live Fire Test and Evaluation (LFTE) and laboratory development tests of vehicles and vehicle technologies subjected to underbody blast (UBB) loading. While UBB events impart primarily vertical loading, the occupant location in the vehicle relative to the blast can result in some inherent non-vertical, or off-axis loading. In this study, the WIAMan Technology Demonstrator (TD) was subjected to 18 tests with a 350g, 5-ms time duration drop tower pulse using an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) energy attenuating seat in four conditions: purely vertical, 15° forward tilt, 15° rearward tilt, and 15° lateral tilt to simulate the partly off-axis loading of an UBB event. The WIAMan TD showed no signs of damage upon inspection. Time history data indicates the magnitude, curve shape, and timing of the response data were sensitive to the off-axis loading in the lower extremity, pelvis, and spine.

While traveling on any type of ground, the damper of a vehicle has the critical task of attenuating the vibrations generated by its irregularities, to promote safety, stability, and comfort to the occupants. To reach that goal, several passive dampers projects are optimized to embrace a bigger frequency range, but, by its limitations, many studies in semiactive and active dampers stands out by promoting better control of the vehicle dynamics behavior. In the case of military vehicles, which usually have more significant dimensions than the common ones and can run on rough or unpaved lands, the use of semi-active or active dampers reveals itself as a promising alternative. Motivated by that, the present study performs an analysis of the vertical dynamics of a wheeled military vehicle with four axles, using magnetorheological dampers. This study is made using a configuration of the distances between the axles of the vehicle, which is chosen from five available options.

The objective of this study was to optimize the occupant restraint systems for a light tactical vehicle in frontal crashes. A combination of sled testing and computational modeling were performed to find the optimal seatbelt and airbag designs for protecting occupants represented by three size of ATDs and two military gear configurations. This study started with 20 sled frontal crash tests to setup the baseline performance of existing seatbelts, which have been presented previously; followed by parametric computational simulations to find the best combinations of seatbelt and airbag designs for different sizes of ATDs and military gear configurations involving both driver and passengers. Then 12 sled tests were conducted with the simulation-recommended restraint designs. The test results were further used to validate the models. Another series of computational simulations and 4 sled tests were performed to fine-tune the optimal restraint design solutions.

Under body blast (UBB) loading to military transport vehicles is known to cause foot-ankle fractures to occupants due to energy transfer from the vehicle floor to the feet of the soldier. The soldier posture, the proximity of the event with respect to the soldier, the personal protective equipment (PPE) and age/sex of the soldier are some variables that can influence injury severity and injury patterns. Recently conducted experiments to simulate the loading environment to the human foot/ankle in UBB events (~5ms rise time) with variables such as posture, age and PPE were used for the current study. The objective of this study was to determine statistically if these variables affected the primary injury predictors, and develop injury risk curves. Fifty below-knee post mortem human surrogate (PMHS) legs were used for statistical analysis. Injuries to specimens involved isolated and multiple fractures of varying severity.