Investigation of Driving Stability of a Vehicle–Trailer Combination Depending on the Load’s Position Within the Trailer

Abstract

Passenger cars are a means of transportation used widely for various purposes. The category that a vehicle belongs to is largely responsible for determining its size and storage capacity. There are situations when the capacity of a passenger vehicle is not sufficient. On the one hand, this insufficient capacity is related to a paucity in the space needed for stowing luggage. It is possible to mount a rooftop cargo carrier or a roof basket on the roof of a vehicle. If a vehicle is equipped with a towbar, a towbar cargo carrier can be used for improving its space capacity. These accessories, however, offer limited additional space, and the maximal load is determined by the maximal payload of the concerned vehicle. If, on the other hand, there is a requirement for transporting a load with a mass or dimensions that are greater than what could be supported using these accessories, then, provided the vehicle is equipped with a towbar, a trailer represents an elegant solution for such demanding requirements. A standard flat trailer allows the transportation of goods of various characters, such as goods on pallets, bulk material, etc. However, the towing of a trailer changes the distribution of the loads, together with changes of loads of individual axes of the vehicle–trailer axles. The distribution of the loads is one of the key factors affecting the driving properties of a vehicle–trailer combination in terms of driving stability, which is mainly a function of the distribution of the load on the trailer. This research introduces a study into how the distribution of the load on a trailer influences the driving stability of a vehicle–trailer combination. The research activities are based on simulation computations performed in a commercial multibody software. While the results presented in the article are reached for a particular vehicle–trailer combination as well as for a particular set of driving conditions, the applicability of the findings can also be extended more generally to the impact that the load distributions corresponding to various vehicle–trailer combinations have on the related parameters and other driving properties.