A Numerical Methodology to Assess the Rollover Risk of a Generic Car- Caravan System in Different Driving Conditions

Abstract

This research proposes a numerical methodology to assess the behavior of a car towing a generic caravan in crosswind conditions. Driving with crosswind can lead to dangerous situations. The vehicle can have stability issues and eventually crash. Different crosswind and vehicle velocities have been analysed using a car-caravan dynamic model with accurate aerodynamic loads. The forces generated by the action of the wind are calculated with CFD simulations and applied to the vehicle to perform dynamic simulations. Results show that also non-extreme crosswind condition could lead to dangerous situations.

Heavy-Vehicle Response to Crosswind: Evaluation of Driver Reactions Using a Dynamic Driving Simulator

“…Among these conditions, high-intensity crosswinds could be listed as one of the most common causes that lead to lane invasion (with the potential of incurring a multi-vehicle accident) and, in the worst cases, to vehicle rollover. This is the reason why a lot of research effort has been made in recent years to investigate this phenomenon by authors like Coleman and Baker [1], Baker et al [2], Cai and Chen [3] and many others [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] considering also different vehicles typologies.…”

“…Indeed, it is more correct of talking of vehicle-driver system interaction with a crosswind. This is why many studies tried to model the human driver (of course in different ways) to keep the driver in the simulation loop [8,21,22].…”