Analysis of the lateral dynamic behaviour of articulated commercial vehicles

The challenge of designing stability control function for trucks is to guarantee robustness for the variations in truck and trailer combinations. The fundamental differences on the dynamic yaw performance of articulated vehicles are studied using the equations of motion. Most truck combinations appear to be mathematically stable during normal driving conditions. Rearward amplification is a more suitable measure to judge the dynamic performance. A frequency domain definition for rearward amplification enables to identify the critical steering frequency input and it better shows the differences in dynamic performance of vehicle combination lay-outs than the conventional lane change approach. It is recommended to use this frequency domain approach to identify critical vehicle combinations when evaluating stability control functions