Title: Directional stability of vehicle trailer systems

Authors: A. Sanyal, R. Karmakar

Addresses: Mahatma Phule Agricultural University, Rahuri-413722, India. ' Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur-721302, India

Abstract: A large volume of work has been done on the directional stability of various types of vehicle trailer system. However, not much information is available on the effect of hitch point damping on directional stability. From simulation of such systems it has been reported that hitch point damping has no effect on aperiodic divergence, and that it decreases yaw response of the trailer. Any convincing study by simulation or eigenvalue analysis in the absence of algebraic equations to the stability boundaries is very laborious and has not been reported so far. This paper presents a study on the stability behaviour of vehicle-trailer combinations through variation of the stability zone due to changes in system parameters. The stability boundaries are obtained using Routh-Hurwitz criterion. The system equations of motion are derived from bondgraph model of a linearised system.

Keywords: directional stability; single-axle trailer systems; two-axle trailer systems; vehicle trailer systems; heavy vehicles.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.1995.054614

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 1995 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.285 - 307

Published online: 18 Jun 2013 *

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