So they took a simple wheel and added a couple hundred parts, increasing cost, maintnence complexity, failure potential, and weight. Is it worth it?
Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
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Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#22That would actually be pretty useful on some farm vehicles. No need to pick a wheeled or tracked tractor, you can have both.
...for twice the price.
Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#23Isn't the advantage of using tracks supposed to be the increased surface area for traction and weight bearing? This seems to only slightly increase the surface area. It doesn't seem that this would have enough traction advantage to make the complexity worth it.
Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#24So they took a simple wheel and added a couple hundred parts, increasing cost, maintnence complexity, failure potential, and weight. Is it worth it?
That's the point of RnD, though, right? Try a hundred things, extensively test ten of them, end up with one or two that actually work.
Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're thinking of the present. It's first stage tech. From here you'd keep iterating - learning, improving, trying various approaches.
I'm hardly an expert, but I believe caterpillar treads have been in regular use for over a century and still take loads of maintenance compared to wheels. However effective it may ultimately be, it seems unlikely that this team will solve that particular problem.
Yup, quickest way to eat into your bank account is to "save" money buying a 20k hour+ old excavator.
Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#26There’s something deeply poetic to this that DARPA didn’t understand the wisdom in what the “reinvent the wheel” phrase means. This seems to embody every bit of its meaning. Replace rubber tires which are brain dead simple and work very well with zero maintenance with this complicated monstrosity that I have many doubts about even being an improvement.
Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#27Isn't the advantage of using tracks supposed to be the increased surface area for traction and weight bearing? This seems to only slightly increase the surface area. It doesn't seem that this would have enough traction advantage to make the complexity worth it.
The contact patch goes from ~ 1 sqft/tire to ~3-4 sqft/tire. That's pretty significant.
Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#28Isn't the advantage of using tracks supposed to be the increased surface area for traction and weight bearing? This seems to only slightly increase the surface area. It doesn't seem that this would have enough traction advantage to make the complexity worth it.
I feel like, having been really introduced in the WW1 tank, that tracks were mostly about keeping motive force over a much longer distance, which is almost but not quite surface area/traction.
This still fails for that purpose though.
Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#29Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
#30Isn't the advantage of using tracks supposed to be the increased surface area for traction and weight bearing? This seems to only slightly increase the surface area. It doesn't seem that this would have enough traction advantage to make the complexity worth it.
The contact patch goes from ~ 1 sqft/tire to ~3-4 sqft/tire. That's pretty significant.
Still if that 3-4ft^2 is in the air it's useless. This doesn't stop high centering or driving into a ditch.