Improved Articulated Vehicles It is generally possible to make the swept path width of trailers in a road train lie within the swept path width of the prime mover or truck, by actively steering the rear wheels of the trailers so that slave reference points located close to the rear ends of the trailers are made to follow a master path traced out by a master reference point located close to the centre of the rear axle group of the prime mover or truck. However, for sharp turns such as the standard PBS 12.5 m radius right hand turn, trailer wheel angles in access of +/- 40 degrees are required. However, it is difficult to manufacture or use actively steered trailer axles with angle ranges greater than +/- 20 degrees. To overcome this problem the curvature of the master path is reduced by locating the master reference point on a virtual (i.e. non-existent) semi-trailer. By increasing the length of this virtual trailer we can reduce the curvature of the master path and thereby reduce the size of the required angle range of the trailer wheels. This will increase the off-tracking of the trailers. However, their off-tracking will still be much smaller than that of trailers with un-steered wheels. Ik p 1'CDC
Improved Articulated Vehicle
2022-01-06
Patent
Electronic Resource
English
IPC: | B60W CONJOINT CONTROL OF VEHICLE SUB-UNITS OF DIFFERENT TYPE OR DIFFERENT FUNCTION , Gemeinsame Steuerung oder Regelung von Fahrzeug-Unteraggregaten verschiedenen Typs oder verschiedener Funktion / G05D SYSTEMS FOR CONTROLLING OR REGULATING NON-ELECTRIC VARIABLES , Systeme zum Steuern oder Regeln nichtelektrischer veränderlicher Größen / B62D MOTOR VEHICLES , Motorfahrzeuge |