Rollover stability of a vehicle during critical driving manoeuvres

In this paper, a linear vehicle model with three degrees of freedom is established to study the stability of vehicle rollover due to critical driving manoeuvres. From the linear vehicle model, the stability conditions are determined on the basis of the Routh-Hurwitz criterion, and a so-called dynamic stability factor is defined to reveal the effects of system parameters on the stability of vehicle rollover. In order to demonstrate the theoretical results, two numerical examples are given for the rollover of a sport utility vehicle in cornering and lane-change manoeuvres at a high speed and large steering angle. The stability regions are shown with respect to the vehicle speed and the vehicle parameters, such as the longitudinal distance from the centre of gravity to the front axle, and the steering angle of the front wheel.