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Mainly motivated by developing cost-effective vehicle anti-roll systems, hydraulically interconnected suspension has been studied in the past decade to replace anti-roll bars. It has been proved theoretically and practically that hydraulic suspensions have superior anti-roll ability over anti-roll bars, and therefore they have achieved commercial success in racing cars and luxury sports utility vehicles (SUVs). However, since vehicle is a highly coupled complex system, it is necessary to investigate/evaluate the hydraulic-suspension-fitted-vehicle's dynamic performance in other aspects, apart from anti-roll ability, such as ride comfort, lateral stability, etc. This paper presents an experimental investigation of a SUV fitted with a hydraulically interconnected suspension under a severe steady steering maneuver; the result is compared with a same type vehicle fitted with anti-roll bars.

A detailed experimental study to quantitatively compare a roll-plane hydraulically interconnected suspension with anti-roll bar in articulation (warp) mode is presented in this paper. Anti-roll bar as part of conventional vehicle suspension system is a standard configuration widely used in road vehicles to provide the essential roll-stiffness to enhance vehicle handling and safety during fast cornering. However the drawback of anti-roll bar is apparent that they limit the wheels' travel on uneven road surface and weaken the wheel/ground holding ability, particularly in articulation mode. Roll-plane Hydraulically Interconnected Suspension (HIS) system, as a potential replacement of anti-roll bar, could effectively increase vehicle roll-stiffness and provide the tunable damping effect, without compromising vehicle's flexibility in articulation mode.