Relative Off-Road Mobility Performance of Six Wheeled and Four Tracked Vehicles in Selected Terrain

The U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station analytical model for predicting off-road ground mobility was used to evaluate the performance of six wheeled vehicles M656, M54A2, M520, M37B1, M561, and M706 and four tracked vehicles M548, M113A1, M116, and M571 over a selected traverse in Thailand. Maps were prepared to exhibit the terrain in terms of surface composition soil consistency, surface geometry slopes, rice-field dikes, etc., vegetation, and hydrologic geometry rivers and streams. The performance of each vehicle was evaluated in terms of average speed over the traverse and the center line, average fuel consumed over the traverse, and center-line cargo delivery rate. The vehicles were run over the traverse under dry-season conditions 60 or 40 rating cone index and wet-season conditions 60 or 35 rating cone index. Four of the vehicles M656, M54A2, M520, and M548 were tested also under wet-season conditions of 60 or 40 rating cone index. Wet-season conditions usually reduced vehicle performance. No one vehicle provided optimum mobility for all the terrain conditions encountered on the traverse over which predictions were made. Further, neither wheels nor tracks appeared to consistently give better performance. A recommendation was made that the mission environment for any new vehicle be defined in quantitative terms before the new vehicle is developed.