Designing and Evaluating Active Safety Systems for Rollover Prevention of All-Terrain Vehicles

Abstract

The sales of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) are increasing year by year, especially in countries like Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. With the increase in sales, a proportional rise in the number of accidents involving all-terrain vehicles is also evident. Of these accidents, the major cause was identified as rollover occurrence. While there are some passive safety devices available in the market for ATVs, there is a lack of rollover prevention devices available. In this paper, two active safety systems to prevent rollover have been evaluated. Lateral Load Transfer Ratio (LLTR) is used as the primary parameter to analyse and signify rollover. First, an alarm-based rollover warning system has been analysed premised on the prediction of LLTR and roll angle, with the alarm predicting these two parameters in advance. Second, to further improve the rollover prevention system, by assisting the driver in case of an impending rollover, an active braking system has been studied. The simulation results show that the prediction-based alarm has the potential to give the driver more time to avoid a rollover, but at the same time there is an increased risk of false alarms. Regarding the brake activation system, the results show that even with small brake force applications, it can lead to a significant reduction of the rollover risk.