The effects of drive configuration on undesirable behaviors of articulated steer vehicles

The dynamic behavior of an articulated steer vehicle with different drive configurations during lateral instabilities is investigated. For doing this, a virtual prototype of a vehicle is used to simulate the disturbance response at a front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, and four-wheel drive configuration during the snaking and jackknifing instabilities. For small deviations, the change in the dynamic behavior due to a change in the drive configuration will be examined. Based on the results, it is shown that the drive configuration has no significant effect on the dynamic behavior of the vehicle during the instabilities.