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The development of larger more productive innovative heavy vehicle combinations for public road operations relies heavily on proving new vehicle concepts to both government and local authorities. In a number of cases simulation modelling has proved to be a useful tool in showing that proposed innovative heavy vehicle concepts are safer and more efficient alternative to conventional equipment. This paper provides examples of the use of AUTOSIM™ in developing custom yaw/roll and yaw/roll/pitch models for investigating the dynamic performance of combination vehicles. Models are described for large innovative road trains which incorporate B-doubles units. Consideration is given to the modeling of the trailing fidelity of these vehicles on non-planar surfaces and examples of model outputs for combination vehicles operating on various three-dimensional features are presented.

Performance measures such as static roll stability, rearward amplification and load transfer ratio are a means to assess the engineering performance of heavy vehicles and to support truck size and weight policy decisions. It was expected that, for a particular vehicle configuration, there would be some degree of correlation between the various performance attributes. For example, a relatively high static roll stability may be associated with a relatively low load transfer ratio, at least within a particular vehicle configuration. In terms of developing performance measures such correlations are of great significance because (i) the number of performance attributes requiring specification may be reduced and (ii) potential conflicts between performance criteria in different attributes may be avoided. This type of analysis has not been carried out before, and requires a large database of performance numerics in order to determine relationships between each of the performance attributes.