Automated Stability Analysis of a Vehicle in Combined Pitch and Roll

摘要

This paper presents a rigid body modeling approach using ADAMS~(TM) for an overturning stability analysis of a vehicle stopped at an arbitrary heading angle on a steep grade. The vehicle is modeled as a six-degree-of-freedom rigid body with multiple contact forces acting on the ground. A gravity vector bounded by sets of spherical coordinates is applied to the vehicle to represent the physics of a vehicle slopped on a grade with any arbitrary combination of pitch and roll angles. A design of experiments study is performed to locate the overturning stability boundaries within given levels of design parameters. Results are output using two effective graphical means of depicting the stability regions and magnitude of contact forces.