Steering Performance Evaluation - Heavy-Duty Highway Tractor Wander Test

Heavy-duty highway tractors are the topic of various studies and tests to understand vehicle wander as a contributing factor to driver fatigue. Subtle variations in steering system characteristics can create measurable differences in performance, and operators may have different subjective opinions of the same system. This paper's purpose is to examine wander test setup and data analysis for tests conducted on an International® Model 9200 tractor-trailer at the Navistar Technology and Engineering Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Instrumented data and subjective ratings were collected using five power steering gears, evaluated by six drivers, operating over a specific test route.