COMPARISON OF THE BEHAVIOR OF ARTICULATED RECREATIONAL VEHICLES WITH EITHER FIXED OR POSITION CONTROL OF STEERING

The use of a subset of the complete equations of motion to determine the lateral stability of an articulated vehicle is considered. It is shown that, with fixed steering, the path of the vehicle diverges from the nominal path even when each eigenvalue associated with the subset of equations has a negative real part. A linear steering law is introduced which is shown, to be effective in controlling the path of the vehicle. It is shown that critical speed is significantly affected by the addition of steering control. With control, critical speed can be higher, lower, or about the same as it is without control. Four different articulated vehicles are treated. The powered vehicle in each case represents a mid-size American car, and the towed vehicles represent utility, boat, travel, and horse trailers. It is shown that trailer swing oscillations can be excited when the path of the car is controlled.