Tracking ability of an MCV on a rural road

This is the latest version of this eprint.

Abstract

Multi-combination vehicles (MCVs) are road freight vehicles comprising of a prime mover and two or more trailers. At each articulation point, movements occur due to the driver, vehicle, road and environment such as driver steering, vehicle length, road roughness and side wind loading, respectively. These lateral displacements dictate the lane width required for vehicles using the road and, if ignored or predicted inaccurately, can affect the cost or safety of the road. Previous research estimated the lane width requirements for several MCVs on two routes with average roughness.

In this current study, a full scale testing programme was undertaken on a rough road to measure the lateral displacement of the rear trailer of a B-Double on a nominally straight path. Video footage was recorded during the tests from a camera on the top of the prime mover which was aimed at target boards at the rear of the vehicle. Lateral movements of the trailers were extracted from the video data – these were relative to a moving frame of reference, namely the prime mover which was subject to driver steering inputs. Corrections were made for the relative angle between the prime mover and the trailers, which was found to vary with the applied steering angle. These corrections were found to result in an increased estimate of the lateral displacement and hence the lane width required.