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Cranfield University

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Ancillary Experiments<br />

7.3.5 The Influence of Contact Time<br />

Due to the different lengths of the plates, contact time varies when assuming the same ve-<br />

hicle speed for traveling. All the scaled plate sinkage experiments before do not take dif-<br />

ferent contact times of the implements into consideration. Therefore a further experiment<br />

was conducted using the square plate, an intermediate rectangular plate (which had not<br />

been used before) and the long rectangular plate representing a “track”. All plates had the<br />

same area and the same average load (0.236 kN) was applied. The contact time for the<br />

square plate was maintained, the contact time for the intermediate and track shape plate<br />

were adapted representing their increased contact length and assuming constant speed in a<br />

hypothetical pass. Therefore contact time for the track was 3.6 s and for the intermediate<br />

plate 2.4 s compared to 1.8 s which was previously used and is now only used for the<br />

square plate having the shortest length. The circular plate was not considered as its diame-<br />

ter is similar to the length of the square.<br />

As the following diagram shows, the track creates the most sinkage due to its prolonged<br />

contact time. There is no difference between the intermediate and the square plate.<br />

Sinkage (mm)<br />

20<br />

15<br />

10<br />

5<br />

0<br />

Track Intermediate Square<br />

Shape<br />

Figure 130: Sinkage for different plate shapes accounting for different contact times<br />

including 95% - CI<br />

These results show the complexity in designing undercarriage systems. All results have to<br />

be taken into consideration simultaneously, because if only contact shape is taken into con-<br />

sideration one conclusion might be drawn, however, when taking contact time into ac-<br />

count, the result might be different. These results contradict the real results from the soil<br />

bin whereby tracks caused a smaller sinkage than tyres although having a longer contact<br />

time. However, the overall reduced contact pressure is not taken into consideration in this<br />

study. Moreover, the track specific soil density increase is described in Section 6.4 for the<br />

track specific in-situ VCL and in Section 7.1 the longitudinal soil movement is investi-<br />

Ph.D. Thesis Dirk Ansorge (2007)<br />

167

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