The Effect of Sideslip on Jackknife Limits during Low Speed Trailer Operation

Abstract

Jackknifing refers to the serious situation where a vehicle-trailer system enters a jackknife state and the vehicle and trailer eventually collide if trailer operation is not corrected. This paper considers low speed trailer maneuvering typical of trailer backing. Jackknife state limits can vary due to sideslip caused by physical interaction between the vehicle, trailer, and environment. Analysis of a kinematic model considers sideslip at the vehicle and trailer wheels. Results indicate that vehicle-trailer systems should be divided into three categories based on the ratio of hitch length and trailer tongue length, each with distinct behaviors. The Long Trailer category may have no jackknifing state while the other two categories always have states leading to jackknifing. It is found that jackknife limits, which are the boundaries between the jackknifing state and the recoverable regions, can be divided into safe and unsafe limits. The latter of which must be avoided. Simulations and physical experiments support these results and provide insight about the implications of vehicle and trailer states with slip that lead to jackknifing. Simulations also demonstrate the benefit of considering these new slip-based jackknife limits in trailer backing control.

A tabu search with geometry‐based sparsification methods for angular traveling salesman problems

“…The algorithmic variants with names starting with "CIF" are methods based on the cheapest insertion heuristic proposed by [5]. The algorithmic variants with names starting by "NN 2 S " are methods based on the nearest neighbor heuristic run from all possible starting vertices and coupled with the 2-opt improvement heuristic. The suffixes "M 15 " and "M 20 " refer to an improvement heuristic similar to a large neighborhood search, in which part of the tour is destroyed by removing all arcs adjacent to a set of vertices in a geographical neighborhood.…”

“…This is also true for drivers of semitrailer trucks that deliver goods in city centers in which corners are typically sharp and tight. By driving sharp corners (even at a low speed), the trailer may end up at a 90‐degree angle relative to the vehicle it is attached to (a phenomenon called “jackknifing”, see [2]). This is an unpleasant situation for the driver, and it increases the hazard to nearby vehicles, properties, and pedestrians as reported by the [3].…”