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Two new 4 X 4 drivetrain systems have been developed for highway tractors that are used to pull multiple trailer combinations. The first one is a 4 X 2 that automatically becomes a 4 X 4 when conditions exist that require 4 X 4 operation. The second one is a full-time 4 X 4 that proportions the drive torque 36% to the front axle and 64% to the rear axle. A unique front driving steering axle has also been developed that permits a 4 X 4 system to be installed in a standard 4 X 2 truck. There is no need to relocate any major components to make space available for a front driving steering axle.

This SAE Standard specifies the test methods, dimensions, and requirements for single core 60 V cables intended for use in road vehicle applications where the nominal system voltage ≤60 V DC (25 V AC). It also specifies additional test methods and/or requirements for 600 V cables intended for use in road vehicle applications where the nominal system voltage is >60 V DC (25 V AC) to ≤600 V DC (600 V AC). Where practical, this standard uses ISO 6722 for test methods, dimensions, and requirements. This standard covers ISO conductor sizes which usually differ from SAE conductor sizes. It also covers the individual cores in multicore cables. See ISO 6722 for “Temperature Class Ratings”.

This Standard specifies the test methods, dimensions, and requirements for single-core 60 V cables intended for use in road vehicle applications where the nominal system voltage ≤ 60 V DC (25 V AC). It also specifies additional test methods and/or requirements for 600 V cables intended for use in road vehicle applications where the nominal system voltage is > 60 V DC (25 V AC) to ≤ 600 V DC (600 V AC). Where practical, this standard uses ISO 6722 for test methods, dimensions, and requirements. This standard covers ISO conductor sizes which usually differ from SAE conductor sizes. It also covers the individual cores in multi-core cables. See ISO 6722 for “Temperature Class Ratings”.

This Standard specifies the test methods, dimensions, and requirements for single-core 60 V cables intended for use in road vehicle applications where the nominal system voltage ≤ 60 V DC (25 V AC). It also specifies additional test methods and/or requirements for 600 V cables intended for use in road vehicle applications where the nominal system voltage is > 60 V DC (25 V AC) to ≤ 600 V DC (600 V AC). Where practical, this standard uses ISO 6722 for test methods, dimensions, and requirements. This standard covers ISO conductor sizes which usually differ from SAE conductor sizes. It also covers the individual cores in multi-core cables. See ISO 6722 for “Temperature Class Ratings”.

This paper examines the performance of different active control strategies for improving lateral stability of car-trailer systems using numerical simulations. For car-trailer systems, three typical unstable motion modes, including trailer swing, jack-knifing and roll-over, have been identified. These unstable motion modes represent potentially hazardous situations. The effects of passive mechanical vehicle parameters on the stability of car-trailer systems have been well addressed. For a given car-trailer system, some of these passive parameters, e.g., the center of gravity of the trailer, are greatly varied under different operating conditions. Thus, lateral stability cannot be guaranteed by selecting a specific passive parameter set. To address this problem, various active control techniques have been proposed to improve handling and stability of car-trailer systems. Feasible control methods involve active trailer steering control (ATSC) and active trailer braking (ATB).

Regulatory requirements in the European Union (EU) for off-road machines and road vehicles are different. Vehicles which transport passengers and goods, along with attached trailers, as well as road motorcycles must meet EEC type-approval requirements. All other types of self-propelled machines must meet the requirements of the Machinery Directive (Council Directive 98/37/EC), and the Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Directive (Council Directive 89/336/EEC) and possibly other directives. This includes such categories as agriculture and forestry machines, construction machines, industrial trucks and similar products. The various directives outline the different processes for demonstrating compliance with the EU requirements. The intent of this paper is to summarize a few of the requirements that are of interest to off-highway equipment manufacturers and to identify some sources of information about the regulatory requirements.

A computer simulation was developed to investigate the effect of wind on test track estimation of heavy truck fuel efficiency. Monte Carlo simulations were run for various wind conditions, both with and without gusts, and for two different vehicle aerodynamic configurations. The vehicle configurations chosen for this study are representative of typical Class 8 tractor trailers and use wind tunnel measured drag polars for performance computations. The baseline (control) case is representative of a modern streamlined tractor and conventional trailer. The comparison (test) case is the baseline case with the addition of a trailer drag reduction device (trailer skirt). The integrated drag coefficient, overall required power, total fuel consumption, and average rate of fuel consumption were calculated for a heavy truck on an oval test track to show the effect of wind on test results.

A computer with dual hard discs has been installed in a trailer as part of a portable field test data acquisition and reduction system. A radio telemetry system with 8 km range and a capacity of 31 channels of analog data is used for obtaining field test data from agricultural equipment. An interactive set of program modules has been developed using two active terminals for plotting and control.

Improving driving safety and freeway capacity is an indispensable research issue for road vehicles, especially for tractor semi-trailers, which on the one hand exhibit unstable motion modes at high speeds due to their articulated configurations and undertake the largest part of freight transportation on freeways. Automatic driving is rated as the ultimate solution of vehicle safety since it can significantly reduce accidents resulting from human driver errors. Proposed in this paper is a gain-scheduled PID controller for automatic path-following of a tractor semi-trailer. The PID controller minimizes the vehicle's predicted lateral deviation and heading error with respect to the desired path at a preview point, and gains of the controller are scheduled with respect to vehicle speed.

Abstract Aiming to improve the handling performance of heavy tractor semi-trailer during turning or changing lanes at high speed, a hierarchical structure controller is proposed and a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test bench of the electronic pneumatic braking system is developed to validate the proposed controller. In the upper controller, a Kalman filter observer based on the heavy tractor semi-trailer dynamic model is used to estimate the yaw rates and sideslip angles of the tractor and trailer. Simultaneously, a sliding mode direct yaw moment controller is developed, which takes the estimated yaw rates and sideslip angles and the reference values calculated by the three-degrees-of-freedom dynamic model of the heavy tractor semi-trailer as the control inputs. In the lower controller, the additional yaw moments of tractor and trailer are transformed into corresponding wheel braking forces according to the current steering characteristics.

Taking a good longitudinal braking performance on flat and level road of tractor and semi-trailer combination as a target, in order to achieve an ideal braking force distribution among axles, while the vehicle deceleration is just depend on the driver's intention, not affected by the variation of semi-trailer mass, the paper proposes a model based vehicle mass identification and braking force distribution strategy. The strategy identifies the driver's braking intention via braking pedal, estimates semi-trailer's mass during the building process of braking pressure in brake chamber, distributes braking force among axles by using the estimated mass. And a double closed-loop regulation of the vehicle deceleration and utilization adhesion coefficient of each axle is presented, in order to eliminate the bad effect of mass estimation error, and enhance the robustness of the whole algorithm. A simulation is conducted by utilizing MATLAB/Simulink and TruckSim.

The optimization of aerodynamic drag represents an important research area for the fuel consumption reduction of heavy duty commercial vehicles. Today's design of tractor-trailers is significantly influenced by legal conditions regarding the vehicle dimensions and the provision of a maximum transportation volume. These boundary conditions lead to brick-shaped trailer outer geometries, especially at the rear ends. That is the reason why the investigations of aerodynamic optimization of commercial vehicle trailers are predominantly restricted to detail measures up to now. The present publication treats the aerodynamic characteristics of general modifications on the outer contour of long-distance haulage trailers in regard of reducing the drag resistance and, thus, potentially also the fuel consumption in highway traffic. A new approach for the realization of a variable outer contour of trailers provides the possibility to adjust the rear end to an aerodynamically optimized shape.

A dual hitch trailer with caster steerable wheels is developed to improve reverse maneuverability and to eliminate the potentially dangerous forward yaw oscillation mode between tow vehicle and trailer. High speed maneuverability, a common deficiency of small trailers of the dual hitch type, is achieved by the use of a patented “mass restraint system” which enables necessary side forces to be developed by the trailer tires during such maneuvers. A mathematical model is developed to analyze the lateral stability of this trailer system and indicates significant improvements over past dual hitch and single ball hitch trailers. Test results on an experimental trailer are included for verification of the model and also to demonstrate the importance of the mass restraint system for high speed maneuvering.

The equations governing the steady-state turning behavior of car-trailer systems are derived without linearization in any of the motion variables and with full consideration of lateral and longitudinal load transfer. Furthermore, the wheel-roadway interaction forces are expressed as nonlinear functions of tire slip angles. The resulting system of variously nonlinear and transcendental equations is solved numerically for a specific vehicle system, and the principal results are condensed into a carpet plot, which can be used as a handling diagram.

A parametric design analysis was performed in order to define the characteristics of protection devices which could be incorporated on the rear end of highway trailers in order to avoid automobile vehicle underride in a crash situation. Of particular concern in this study was the effect of weight and cost of the devices as they relate to parameters such as load capacity, guard height, restriction of the rear sliding bogie movement, and energy attenuation. Four separate design concepts were studied and compared on the basis of weight, cost, and slider restriction. Included were rigid as well as energy absorbing design approaches. Results have generally indicated that the energy absorbing guard approach has the best potential from a weight efficiency standpoint. The study also points out that significant modifications will be required to the trailer structure to absorb the impact loads under consideration.

This paper describes a practical and efficient approach for determining complete transient, as well as steady state response of tractor-trailer air brake systems by recording pushrod displacement and air brake service line pressure as a function to time. The test hardware utilizes easy to fabricate “clip on” transducers to measure pushrod stroke length. Data acquisition is via LABVIEW‚. All transducers are easy to temporarily affix to any tractor- trailer and require no alteration to the vehicle. A complete system check takes less time than manually measuring pushrod stroke as required under FMCSA. This system with one treadle application and release gives digital timing and displacement history of all brakes. Useful information includes: application and release profiles (pushrod velocity), shoe compliance upon seating and crack pressure release points for both tractor and trailer relay valves.

Ensuring the lateral stability and handling of a car-and-trailer combination remains one of the challenges in safety system design and development for articulated vehicles. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art approaches for car-trailer lateral stability control. A literature review covering the effects of external factors, such as aerodynamic forces, tire forces, and road & climatic conditions, is presented. To address the effects of these factors, researchers have previously investigated numerous passive and active safety control techniques. This paper intends to identify the inadequacies of the passive safety approaches and analyzes promising active-control schemes, such as active trailer steering control (ATSC), active trailer braking (ATB) and model reference adaptive controller (MRAC). A comparative study of these control strategies in terms of applicability and cost effectiveness is performed.

Crashes between passenger vehicles and large tractor trailer vehicles often result in serious injuries and death. There have been few studies of this class of crash involving the side of the large tractor trailers and the passenger vehicles. Studies have shown that side underrides are underreported in crash records. A literature search has shown that there are no generally accepted methodologies to document and scientifically reconstruct a side underride accident. Some of the problems existed because there was a general lack of information on the side underride crash. Rear underride crashes were being studied which yielded helpful information.

The steady-state turning behavior of vehicles pulling trailers is formulated in a simplified manner using the concept of a handling diagram. The formulation assumes small slip angles but admits a non-linear relationship between the slip angle and side force of the tires.