ANALYSIS OF LARGE VEHICLE DYNAMICS FOR IMPROVING ROLL STABILITY

Commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses are prone to roll over because of their high centres-of-gravity. There have been static analyses of roll stability of these large vehicles in the past, but not many researches concentrated on dynamic characteristics of their roll motions. In this study, a truck with and without load is used for experiments to determine its roll behaviours and its relationship with the plane motions such as the yaw rate and lateral acceleration in realistic driving conditions. Also, simple vehicle models are applied to simulate these motions without time-consuming model identification processes. It is found that inclusion of the roll motion in the model is necessary but not sufficient for the model to be accurate.