Study on Rollover Index and Stability for a Triaxle Bus

Vehicle rollover, and its resulting fatalities, is an actively researched topic especially for multi-axle vehicles in the field of vehicle dynamics and control. This paper first presents a new rollover index for a triaxle bus to accurately evaluate its rollover possibility and then discusses the influence laws of the vehicle rollover dynamics to explore the mechanism of its stability. First, a six degree of freedom rollover model of the triaxle bus is developed, including lateral, yaw, roll motion of the sprung mass of the front/rear axle, and roll motion of the unsprung mass of the front/rear axle. Next, some key parameters of the vehicle rollover model are identified. A new rollover index is deduced according to the basics of vehicle dynamics, to predict vehicle rollover risk for the triaxle bus, which is verified by TruckSim. Furthermore, the influence laws of vehicle rollover dynamics by vehicle parameters and road parameters are discussed based on the simulation results. More importantly, the results show that the new method of modeling can precisely describe the rollover dynamics of the studied bus, and the proposed new index can effectively evaluate the rollover possibility. Therefore, this study provides a theoretical basis to improve anti-rollover ability for triaxle buses.