NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR MILITARY TRACK BUSHING ACCELERATED TESTING AND EVALUATION

This paper identifies the failure modes of military track bushings during lab testing and looks at correlation of lab tests failure modes with those found in field testing failures. In an effort to understand and duplicate the failures seen in the field, a track shoe was modified to measure the displacement (magnitude and direction) of the bushing pin relative to the inside diameter of the track shoe bore. Utilizing Hall Effect Technology and a small data acquisition system, test course data was recorded and analyzed. A specially designed bushing test machine, capable of testing the entire track pitch, was also designed and built in order to duplicate the field failure in a laboratory environment.