The Influence of Drawbar Flexibility and Roll Steer on the Stability of Articulated Vehicles

Recently, Taylor and Kane have drawn attention to the potentially destabilizing influence of drawbar flexibility on the stability of articulated vehicles. They assumed that roll freedom does not affect stability. Moncarz, however, used a model that did not include drawbar flexibility and concluded that roll has a significant influence. Two questions are addressed in this paper. How do roll steer and drawbar flexibility affect stability? Are these effects independent? Comparisons of the stability predictions from four different articulated vehicle models lead to the conclusions that both roll steer and drawbar flexibility can have significant effects on stability and that these effects are not independent.