Modeling, analysis, and measurement of passenger vehicle stability

Vehicle rollover represents a significant percentage of single-vehicle accidents and accounts for over 9,000 fatalities and over 200,000 non-fatal injuries each year. Previous automotive research has studied ways for detecting and mitigating rollover on flat ground at high speed, and robotics research has studied the rollover stability of robots on rough terrain at low speed. Accident statistics show, however, that over 80% of rollovers occur when a vehicle departs the roadway and encounters sloped and rough terrain at high speed. This thesis investigates the stability limits imposed by off-road terrain conditions and techniques for measuring vehicle stability in the presence of off-road terrain factors. An analysis of the effects of terrain slope, roughness, and deformability on vehicle rollover stability in road departure scenarios is presented. A simple model that captures the first-order effects of each of these terrain features is presented and used to compare the relative danger posed by each factor. A new stability measure is developed that is valid in off-road conditions, which include sloped, rough, and deformable terrain. The measure is based on the distribution of wheel-terrain contact forces and is measurable with practical sensors.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Peters, Steven C. (Steven Conrad)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Karl Iagnemma.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38282

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38282