Investigation into untripped rollover of light vehicles in the modified fishhook and the sine maneuvers. Part I: Vehicle modelling, roll and yaw instability

Vehicle rollovers may occur under steering-only maneuvers because of roll or yaw instability. In this paper, the modified fishhook and the sine maneuvers are used to investigate a vehicle's rollover resistance capability through simulation. A 9-degrees of freedom (DOF) vehicle model is first developed for the investigation. The vehicle model includes the roll, yaw, pitch, and bounce modes and passive independent suspensions. It is verified with the existing 3-DOF roll-yaw model. A rollover critical factor (RCF) quantifying a vehicle's rollover resistance capability is then constructed based on the static stability factor (SSF) and taking into account the influence of other key dynamic factors.

Simulation results show that the vehicle with certain parameters will rollover during the fishhook maneuver because of roll instability; however, the vehicle with increased suspension stiffness, which does not rollover during the fishhook maneuver, may exceed its rollover resistance limit because of yaw instability during the sine maneuver. Typically, rollover in the sine maneuver happens after several cycles.

It has been found that the proposed RCF well quantifies the rollover resistance capability of a vehicle for the two specified maneuvers. In general, the larger the RCF, the more kinetically stable is a vehicle. A vehicle becomes unstable when its RCF is less than zero. Detailed discussion on the effects of key vehicle system parameters and drive conditions on the RCF in the fishhook and the sine maneuver is presented in Part II of this study.