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Compared to the vehicles with conventional steering, the articulated frame steer vehicles (ASV) are known to exhibit lower directional and roll stability limits. Furthermore, the tire interactions with relatively rough terrains could adversely affect the directional and roll stability limits of an ASV due to terrain-induced variations in the vertical and lateral tire forces. It may thus be desirable to assess the dynamic safety of ASVs in terms of their directional control and stability limits while operating on different terrains. The effects of terrain roughness on the directional stability limits of an ASV are investigated through simulations of a comprehensive three-dimensional model of the vehicle with and without a rear axle suspension. The model incorporates a torsio-elastic rear axle suspension, a kineto-dynamic model of the frame steering struts and equivalent random profiles of different undeformable terrains together with coherence between the two tracks profiles.

An Active Independent Front Steering (AIFS) offers attractive potential for realizing improved directional control performance compared to the conventional Active Front Steering (AFS) system, particularly under more severe steering maneuvers. The AIFS control strategy adjusts the wheel steer angles in an independent manner so as to utilize the maximum available adhesion at each wheel/road contact and thereby compensate for cornering loss caused by the lateral load transfer. In this study, the performance potentials of AIFS are explored for vehicles experiencing greater lateral load transfers during steering maneuvers such as partly-filled tank trucks. A nonlinear yaw plane model of a two-axle truck with limited roll degree-of-freedom is developed to study the performance potentials of AIFS under different cargo fill conditions.

A new extended planar model for multi-axle articulated vehicle with nonlinear tire model is presented. This nonlinear multi-axle articulated vehicle model is specifically intended for improving the model performance in operating regimes where tire lateral force is near the point of saturation, and it has the potential to extend the specific axles model to any representative configuration of articulated vehicle model. At the same time, the extended nonlinear vehicle model can reduce the model's sensitivity to the tire cornering coefficients. Firstly, a nonlinear tire model is used in conjunction with the 6-axle planar articulated vehicle model to extend the ranges of the original linear model into the nonlinear regimes of operation. Secondly, the performance analysis of proposed nonlinear vehicle model is verified through the double lane change maneuver on different road adhesion coefficients using TruckSim software.