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Technical Paper

An Integrated Model of Rolling and Sliding in Rollover Crashes

2012-04-16
2012-01-0605
Rollover crashes are often difficult to reconstruct in detail because of their chaotic nature. Historically, vehicle speeds in rollover crashes have been calculated using a simple slide-to-stop formula with empirically derived drag factors. Roll rates are typically calculated in an average sense over the entire rollover or a segment of it in which vehicle roll angles are known at various positions. A unified model to describe the translational and rotational vehicle dynamics throughout the rollover sequence is lacking. We propose a pseudo-cylindrical model of a rolling vehicle in which the rotational and translational dynamics are coupled to each other based on the average frictional forces developed during ground contacts. We describe the model as pseudo-cylindrical because vertical motion is ignored but the ground reaction force is not constrained to act directly underneath the center of gravity of the vehicle.
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