A newly developed snow vehicle (SM100S) for Antarctica II. Design of the system

Abstract

This paper describes the design of the systems of a newly developed snow vehicle, which will be used for the deep ice coring project at Dome Fuji, East Antarctica. This vehicle is a cab-over full-track type, in which the accommodations for two persons are prepared. The vehicle is 11500kg in gross weight and traverses at 5-8km/h pulling seven wooden type sledges each of which is 2.6t in loaded weight. The vehicle operates at low temperature down to -60℃ on the Antarctic ice sheet from the plain up to the high plateau of 4000m in altitude. In addition, the preservation of the vehicle is possible under the severe environment as cold as -90℃. In the process of the development, first we analyzed the requested performance and then estimated structure, configuration and dimensions of the vehicle. We extracted the problems from the other snow vehicles operated before in Antarctica and then solved them by means of experiments and researches to make use of the results for the design.