Maneuverability limity and handling criterion of articulated vehicles

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Maneuverability limity and handling criterion of articulated vehicles

D'Souza, A.F. / Eshleman, R.L.

Articulated vehicles are susceptible during road maneuvers to lateral instability which gives rise to rapid loss of alignment between the tractor and semitrailer. In this paper, lateral stability and maneuverability limits are studied both analytically and experimentally for tractor-semitrailer vehicles performing common road maneuvers including cornering, lane change and evasive action. The analytical study employs the nonlinear differential equations of motion for the coupled vehicles reflecting their characteristics, tire model and handling. A computer simulation method is employed to investigate the maneuverability limits. The computational strategy is a semi-inverse response method where the path and velocity of the tractor center of mass are specified and the values of the other variables and control inputs are computed. In addition, the stability of cornering maneuver of constant radius at constant forward velocity is investigated in the frist approximation (Lyapunov's first method) and the results compared with those yielded by simulation method. An experimental verification program was conducted involving full scale field testing of tractor-semitrailer vehicles in order to validate the mathematical model and the analytically inferred limits.