Impact of Wind Forces on Heavy Truck Stability

Abstract

A transport truck equipped with instrumentation that measured speed, lateral acceleration, and roll angle of the vehicle was driven around a highway ramp in New Brunswick, Canada, under varying wind conditions. The rollover threshold of the truck was calculated on the basis of characteristics of the vehicle and then compared with the lateral accelerations measured on the truck. Analysis of the data indicated that there was a significant difference in lateral accelerations between different wind speeds, verifying that wind can contribute to rollover. Analysis of the rollover threshold revealed that the lateral accelerations experienced by the truck were often greater than the rollover threshold for brief periods of time, but they were not sufficiently long enough to cause rollover.