STABILITY AND HANDLING CRITERIA OF ARTICULATED VEHICLES. PART I

An analytical and experimental investigation on the stability and handling of articulated vehicles was conducted to develop stability criteria for tractor single-, double-, and triple-semitrailer vehicles during commonly encountered road and speed maneuvers subject to environmental influences. To this end, an experimentally validated digital simulation model, AVDS3, was further developed and validated. It was utilized to generate physical stability limits for articulated vehicles. During the investigation, the direct method of Lyapunov was employed to generate mathematical stability limits of cornering articulated vehicles. In addition, an effort was made to apply the concept of finite time stability to this problem. Portions of this document are not fully legible. /NTIS/