UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Terramechanics and geomechanics are rarely considered early career paths. This talk traces the speaker’s journey from structural engineering to terramechanics, highlighting connections between fields and key project insights. It also details the path to securing an NSF CAREER Award and offers guidance for aspiring engineers and researchers. Terramechanics, focused on terrain–machine interaction, is vital for advancing autonomous systems in construction, mining, agriculture, and mobility.

MOBILITY SYSTEMS BRANCH, ERDC, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS

This talk will discuss the importance of sensors to autonomous ground vehicle mobility and some of the challenges involved in accurately modeling these sensors to provide useful data in modeling and simulation tools.

SOIL MACHINE DYNAMIC LABORATORY, IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

This talk focuses on the virtual performance analysis of bulldozer blades and subsoilers to optimize design, train AI, and advance automation for earth-moving vehicles. It integrates high-fidelity elasto-plastic cohesive DEM soil models, similitude scaling, and validation experiments to predict energy and dynamic soil interactions. This approach supports digital twin development, enhances electric-powered off-road vehicle design, and accelerates AI-driven automation in earth-moving operations.

This talk will explore how the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center - ERDC (previously known as WES) approaches mobility for ground vehicles operating in adverse conditions. In particular, this presentation talks about mobility research on soft soils and cold regions from Dr. Brad Hansen and Mr. Michael Parker

Zeinab El-Sayegh, PhD, PEng, Department of Automotive and Mechatronics Engineering, Ontario Tech University, will introduce the concept of virtual soil moisturization and its impact on the performance of 315/80R22.5-sized truck tires. The truck tires are simulated using multiple layers and materials in a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) environment. Moist sand, composed of layered water and sand particles, is simulated using the Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) technique. The tire-sand interaction is defined by a hybrid FEA-SPH interaction model, and the tire's tractive performance—including tractive effort, motion resistance coefficient, and tire sinkage—will be presented.

Christopher Goodin, Ph.D., Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Mississippi State University, will introduce the MAVS and show some examples of how it is being used in the classroom as an instructional tool for autonomous vehicles, by graduate students for research, and by researchers around the world in a variety of military and commercial applications. The technical underpinnings of the MAVS will also be presented.

Dan Negrut, NVIDIA CUDA Fellow, Bernard A. and Frances M. Weideman Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Simulation-Based Engineering Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Our lab has worked on several projects aimed at improving the mobility of autonomous rovers operating in lunar conditions. The design of such rovers increasingly relies on computer simulation. The talk will cover two main topics: it presents an overview of terramechanics models in robotics, and it briefly describes the sensing used in lunar mobility simulations.