Soil Models Survey and Vehicle System Dynamics

The mechanical behavior of soils may be approximated using different models that depend on particular soil characteristics and simplifying assumptions. For this reason, researchers have proposed and expounded upon a large number of constitutive models and approaches that describe various aspects of soil behavior. However, there are few material models capable of predicting the behavior of soils for engineering applications and are at the same time appropriate for implementation into finite element (FE) and multibody system (MBS) algorithms. This paper presents a survey of different commonly used terramechanics and continuum-based soil models. The aim is to provide a summary of soil models, compare them, and examine their suitability for integration with large-displacement FE absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) and MBS algorithms. Special emphasis is placed on the formulations of soils used in conjunction with vehicle dynamic models. A brief review of computer software used for soil modeling is provided and the implementation of these soil models in MBS algorithms used in the analysis of complex vehicle systems is discussed.