Vehicle Testing

The Keweenaw Research Center is involved in all aspects of mobility research from design of vehicle components and systems, to vehicle testing, to terrain modeling and manipulation. A team of experts is always available to study the smallest component of a vehicle or model the entire system in a real world setting.

KRC’s Systems Evaluation Group or SEG has over 20 years of experience in conducting a wide variety of vehicle mobility tests on vehicles ranging from snowmobiles and ATV’s to large trucks and even military tanks. The SEG handles the vehicle end of mobility testing while the ISR group at KRC performs the terrain characterization. Using the wide variety of soil and snow conditions on the KRC test course we can test under almost any condition.

Typical mobility tests include drawbar pull, braking, slope climbing and side slope stability. KRC uses state of the art instrumentation and data acquisition systems on the vehicles to monitor and record data for later analysis.

Mobility tests are typically conducted for one of a number of reasons which include comparing performance of vehicles, determining if your vehicle meets a certain specification, setting specifications for marketing purposes or determining mobility performance as a baseline and investigating methods for improving the baseline mobility to a higher level.

Together with our mobility analysis and modeling capabilities, KRC has the experience to analyze and make recommendations for improving your vehicle’s mobility.