Search Results

Rollover of tractor/semi-trailer trucks is a serious concern by its human and financial consequences. No widely accepted method to prevent these harmful events has been found so far. A solution to this problem might be to detect and warn the operator on the center of gravity height of the heavy truck in on-road conditions. Estimating the center of gravity position of a vehicle while in motion may be a feasible approach, according to previous work. A more complicated problem is performing the estimation for a tractor/semi-trailer combination vehicle by measurements done on the tractor exclusively. The paper presents simple formulas which allow the above estimation for a minimal number of parameters and acquired data. Calculations done on the data describing the steady-state cornering of a real truck showed that an estimation with an error of about 20-22% of the center of gravity height by measurements done on the tractor vehicle exclusively seems possible.