Innovative universal vehicle for experimental tests on roll-over stability of off-road wheeled machines and vehicles

The current standards in roll-over stability of off-road wheeled machines and vehicles do not include many significant factors of their design and performance (e.g. suspension type and parameters, stiffness of tires) as well as operation conditions (e.g. inclination and bearing capacity of the ground). In practice, it results in many dangerous roll-over accidents, particularly of articulated body steer vehicles, which might involve the operator’s death and/or severe damage to the machine and its surroundings. In recent years, some solutions developed and applied by particular companies aimed at roll-over stability improvement have been noticed. Unfortunately, their use appears to be not optimal and the aggregated knowledge remains usually a know-how of the company. For comprehensive explanation of this problem the Division of Off-Road Machine and Vehicle Engineering has built the innovative universal test vehicle for experimental tests on roll-over stability of off-road wheeled machines and vehicles. This unique at global level, universal test vehicle enables the undercarriage structure and properties to be optionally selected and roll-over stability to be tested on special rotary-tilting platform with on-line measurement of three components of reaction forces under each wheel. The paper presents the parameters and research potential of the original universal tests vehicle with the exemplary tests results