A Study of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 126 and 136 Test Procedures on a Class 5 Vehicle

Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) 126 and 136 are standards imposed on four of the eight recognized road vehicle classes in The United States. These standards make it mandatory for Electronic Stability Control modules (ESC) to be mounted to Class 1,2,7, and 8 vehicles. These modules strategically activate the vehicle brakes via the Antilock Brake System (ABS) to limit the recorded yaw rate and lateral displacement of a vehicle during an extreme cornering maneuver such as a sudden swerve to avoid an obstacle on the road. The two aforementioned FMVSS mandates also specify three different driving maneuvers that are conducted to profile and analyze ESC module performance. There is now an interest in creating a new FMVSS that makes ESC modules mandatory for Class 5 vehicles. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how one specific Class 5 vehicle’s ESC module performed when subjected to the two test procedures that correspond to FMVSS 126 and 136. As will be seen, the vehicle’s ESC performed quite well for the FMVSS 126 testing criteria and not as well with the FMVSS 136 testing criteria. The details of these results should both be considered if and when a new FMVSS ESC mandate is to be produced. To aide in the creation of such a mandate, additional experimental and simulation data will be necessary from other Class 5 vehicles. Simulated driving maneuvers with an accurate vehicle model will prove valuable in this pursuit. The results of such simulations will be discussed and the value that they bring will help to expedite the formation of the proposed FMVSS that covers these vehicles.