A newly developed snow vehicle (SM100S) for Antarctica. Part 2: Design of the system

This report 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 11,500 kg in gross weight and traverses at 5 to 8 km/h pulling seven wooden type sledges each of which is 2.6 t in loaded weight. The vehicle operates at low temperature down to -60 C on the Antarctic ice sheet from the plain up to the high plateau of 4,000 m in altitude. In addition, the preservation of the vehicle is possible under the severe environment as cold as -0 C. In the process of the development, the requested performance was analyzed first, and then the structure, configuration, and dimensions of the vehicle were estimated. Problems from other snow vehicles operated before in Antarctica were extracted and then were solved by means of experiments and researches to make use of the results for the design.