MTS awarded contract for world’s largest heavy vehicle durability simulator

MTS Systems Corporation has been awarded a contract valued at $30.4M, inclusive of all options, to design and build the world’s largest spindle-coupled road simulator for the US Army. The contract will be incrementally funded, and the majority of options exercisable in fiscal years 2020, 2021 and 2022.

The road simulator will be installed at the US Army’s Aberdeen Test Centre in Maryland, and used to accelerate military vehicle durability testing, compressing the required testing time by 75 to 80 per cent. Simulating real-world conditions in the lab will allow the Army to quickly assess and improve vehicle reliability and durability to avoid potentially time-consuming in-field failures.

The overall system supports Department of Defense directives to integrate more modeling and simulation tools into vehicle development and testing. In addition to the road simulator, the solution includes MTS SWIFT EVO 50 Wheel Force Transducers for gathering real-time data from these vehicles on various proving ground terrains, and will require one of MTS’ largest hydraulic installations to provide several thousand gallons per minute of continuous hydraulic power. The simulator will be able to test vehicles with up to five axles and weighing up to 100,000 lbs.

“This road simulator is a scaled-up extension of the heavy truck testing technology that MTS has developed over the last fifty years,” says Dr. Jeffrey Graves, MTS President and CEO. “MTS is pleased to apply knowledge from commercial vehicle modeling and simulation to create full-vehicle testing solutions for the Army. This new system will help increase military vehicle reliability and allow the Army to tailor vehicle designs for optimal performance in the field.”