Steering stability of a passive front wheel design on tilting narrow track vehicle

We have proposed a passive front wheel steering that mechanically follows the vehicle body tilting for narrow track vehicle. The main purpose of this work is to investigate the steering stability of the vehicle with passive front wheel design. A three-wheel vehicle model was developed based on multibody system approach for dynamics simulation and analysis. We have conducted three steering stability analyses by simulation: (a) Low speed steering analysis; (b) Slalom steering analysis; (c) Uneven road surface steering analysis. A prototype vehicle was developed to conduct experiment for comparison to validate the simulation modeling development. In this paper, three comparison analyses are illustrated: (i) Constant circular turning analysis; (ii) Single lane change analysis; (iii) Rolling frequency and phase shift analysis. The simulation results are closely agreed with the experiment results, proven our vehicle model can simulate accurately the vehicle dynamics with passive front wheel steering.