Abstract:The handling performance of a 8×8 skid steered all terrain vehicle equipped with doublestream hydromechanical transmission(HMT) was studied. A 2 DOF dynamic model was proposed and verified by simulation and experiment. The result shows that there are great differences between the steady state performance of skid steered vehicle and Ackermann steered vehicle. The skid steered vehicle has a better transient handling performance because of the special steering mode. Moreover, the transit performance of the skid steered vehicle is better than that of the Ackermann steered vehicle. Furthermore, because of larger side slip angle during a turning, tyres of skid steering vehicle are more easily worn out.