Today, active dynamic control systems for commercial vehicles, offering improved safety, are frequently discussed. Yaw stabilising systems are based on theories from passenger car implementation, yet roll stabilisation - probably introduced in the near future - requires increased knowledge of rollover mechanics.
Static analysis, providing steady state rollover threshold (SSRT), is the most common approach. Nevertheless in a rolling vehicle, kinetic energy is always present, deteriorating roll stability, invalidating the analysis. A simple method determining the dynamic rollover threshold (DRT) is therefore introduces in this paper.
DRT is the worst case measure of roll instability: the conditions are necessary but not sufficient for rollover. Simulations using a validated model however, confirm theories: rollover occurs for the un-damped vehicle when a lateral acceleration step-input, equal to DRT, is introduced and at a little higher acceleration, still distinctly lower than SSRT, when dampers are included.