SIMULATION OF GROUND VEHICLE MOBILITY EVALUATION WITH MERCURY

Mobility is a crucial vehicle requirement for the Army, as it needs to ensure that soldiers to not become immobilized in conflict. The Army currently pays thousands of dollars annually in order to obtain licenses for commercial software to analyze vehicle mobility. The High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments for Ground Vehicles (CREATE™-GV) Mercury attempts to provide the Army with a high-fidelity tool that can analyze mobility at the same level as commercial software, while being owned and developed by the government. By providing a government owned mobility software, Mercury eliminates licensing fees and allows development of the software to be focused on military applications and what the Army needs. Mercury can continuously evolve to meet the Army’s future goals and requirements.

Mercury currently is capable of modeling many vehicle subsystems in order to provide very robust vehicle models. These vehicle models can then be run through an assortment of mobility tests that the Army runs its vehicles through in the physical world. By modeling high-fidelity vehicles within Mercury first, the Army can easily test new concepts for vehicles before spending funds on building a physical prototype. This study will provide an overview of Mercury as well as an example of a vehicle modelled and ran through Mercury.