Analysis of Kinematics of a Gear Steering Mechanism for the Tracked Vehicles

The steering mechanism is the important part of tracked vehicles. This paper presents a systematic methodology for the analysis of kinematics of a gear steering mechanism for the tracked vehicles. Based on the graph theory, a canonical modeling is proposed to represent the kinematic structure of the gear steering mechanism efficiently. The concepts of graph theory and fundamental circuit theory are used to develop this systematic methodology. The speed equations of the gear steering mechanism are formulated. Then, the kinematics of the gear steering mechanism have been analyzed. The results of this work are used as a tool to design the gear steering mechanism for the tracked vehicles.