Title: Snaking stability of articulated frame steer vehicles with axle suspension

Authors: Adam Rehnberg, Lars Drugge, Annika Stensson Trigell

Addresses: Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Department of Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering, Division of Vehicle Dynamics, Centre for ECO² Vehicle Design, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. ' Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Department of Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering, Division of Vehicle Dynamics, Centre for ECO² Vehicle Design, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. ' Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Department of Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering, Division of Vehicle Dynamics, Centre for ECO² Vehicle Design, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: A known problem of articulated vehicles is that snaking oscillations may occur at high speed. For ride comfort reasons, it is desirable to introduce suspended axles on articulated vehicles such as wheel loaders which are traditionally built without wheel suspension. This paper investigates how this may affect the snaking stability, by studying the vehicle dynamic behaviour of a multibody simulation model with and without suspension. Results show that an axle suspension may have a slightly destabilising effect, although the difference is small and can be offset by a stiffer or more damped steering system.

Keywords: articulated vehicles; snaking stability; lateral stability; MBS; multibody simulations; axle suspension; ride comfort; vehicle dynamics; steering systems; heavy vehicles; snaking oscillations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2010.033178

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2010 Vol.17 No.2, pp.119 - 138

Published online: 10 May 2010 *

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