Modal analysis and dynamic shimmy behavior of vehicle–road system

Abstract

To analyze the influence of the road roughness excitation on vehicle shimmy, a 12 degrees-of-freedom dynamic model of vehicle–road system is developed. The Hopf bifurcation theory is used to study the system stability. On this basis, the natural frequency and modal properties of the vehicle system are elaborated. It can be found that the roll mode plays a crucial role in the vehicle stability. Then, the dynamic shimmy behavior exposed to the sinusoidal and random road roughness excitations is investigated with the help of the modal analysis and the largest Lyapunov exponent. Furthermore, the numerical results are verified through the measurement results, and the influence of the front wheel track on vehicle shimmy is also examined. The results show that the decrease of the front wheel track is an effective way to attenuate vehicle shimmy for different road roughness excitations.