A three-dimensional model of a wheel moving through snow was generated using commercial finite element software (ABAQUS). Because of the large deformation of the snow relative to the tire, a rigid wheel was used to simplify computations. The snow was modeled as both an elastic-plastic material and as a crushable foam material. Models of uniaxial compression and plate sinkage tests in snow were used to explore the snow material model and match measured and observed snow deformation to model results. These constitutive models were then applied to the three-dimensional tire-snow model. New ALE (Arbitrary lagrangian-Eulerian) adaptive meshing formulations were also evaluated for improvements in handling the large deformations encountered in tire-snow interactions. Modeled snow deformation is compared to sinkiage, displacement, and changes in snow densities. The modeled reaction forces on the wheel are compared with tire forces measured using the CRREL Instrumented Vehicle.
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