Citation

St. John AD, Glauz WD. Transp. Res. Rec. 1995; 1485: 80-89.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

One of the most cited advantages of using wide-base tires is to increase the stability relative to rollover of a truck or trailer. The rollover thresholds of a two-axle full trailer when it is equipped with conventional dual-wheel axles and when it is equipped with wide-base tire-axle assemblies are compared, and the stability benefits of design changes to trailers enabled by the wide-base configuration are evaluated. Because it is important in such analyses to account for the locations of the forces exerted by the pavement on the tires, it was necessary to include the effects of tire deflections in the analyses. The results showed that the tire deflection effects reduced the rollover stabilities over those determined by a rigid tire analysis by 5 to 6%. The increases in the rollover stabilities of trailers with wide-base tires rather than dual tires were relatively small (up to 6%). However, if the user of wide-base tires takes advantage of the ability to spread the suspension springs and lower the center of gravity of the trailer, increases in rollover stability of 18 to 21% are possible.

Record URL:
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/trr/1995/1485/1485-011.pdf

Language: en

Keywords

Stability; Tires; Stiffness; Truck transportation; Loads (forces); Truck trailers; Vehicle suspensions