The Speed-Track

Abstract: The Speed-Track is a prototype of tracked vehicle made for material transportation on yards andgalleries. It was realized in 2011 and during the past two years has been employed mainly forload transportation on mountains. The main innovations adopted by the vehicle are about thesuspension system and the hydrostatic transmission; the combination of both allows acomfortable driving up to a maximum speed of 20 km/h.First of all, the present thesis aims to quantitatively evaluate the performances of the vehiclefrom the point of view of the suspension system and the transmission. The design of the vehicle,in fact, has been driven by the designer’s experience and no preliminary simulations and sizingcomputations have been performed.According to the outcomes of the first step as well as the feedback, some improvements to thecurrent configuration are designed and evaluated. The feedback has been submitted to theprototype’s users through a questionnaire. Improvements are supposed to be easily implementedon the existing vehicle.The outcomes of the previous steps as well as the communication with employees andentrepreneurs and the knowledge of the state of the art in terms of construction and earthmovingmachines drive the last step of the present work.The employees and entrepreneurs consulted mainly work in the agricultural sector and they havebeen contacted through web-based forums. In addition, the participation to the fair Bauma 2013allowed us to get a more complete picture of the state of the art.New solutions, starting from scratch, are designed in the last part.Keywords: