Abstract: A newly found phenomenon of carved driving wheels of a rear-wheel-drive tractor used in an airport is discussed. The circum of every driving wheel is damaged at three regions, which distribute regularly and uniformly. Everyday, the tractor tows a trailer which are times heavier than the tractor, and moves on the same road in the airport. The phenomenon is explained by the torsional self-excited vibration system of the powertrain. The simplified torsional vibration system is discribed by a 2-order ordinary differential equation, which has a limit circle. Experiments and numerical simulations show the followings: Because of the heavy trailer, the slip ratio of the tractor’s driving wheels is very large. Therefore, there is severe torsional self-excited vibration in the tractor’s drivetrain, and the self-excited vibration results in severe and regular fluctuations of the rear wheel’s velocity. The severe fluctuations in velocity fastens the damage of the driving wheels. At the same time, the time interval in which an arbitrary point in the circum of the driving wheel contacts with the road twice is two times more than the period of the torsional self-excited vibration, and this times explained the existence of three damaged regions. At last, it points out that the phenomenon can be avoided when the torsional damping is large enough.

Key words: Driving wheel Tractor Powertrain Self-excited vibration