On the performance of ground vehicles under the influence of stochastic wind loads

Abstract

AbstractThe influence of aerodynamic loads on the performance of ground vehicles is an important economical, safety and comfort issue. For the safety and comfort matters, especially the crosswind behavior of the ground vehicles is of great interest, as strong lateral winds can cause major accidents or at least make the driver and the passengers feel very uncomfortable and insecure.Two different failure scenarios dominate the safety aspect. The most important one is the risk of overturning, which happens not very often but if it occurs it leads in most cases to serious personal damages and the second one is the sudden lane change of road vehicles and the associated driving instabilities because of unforeseen gusts.As most of the design and excitation parameters of the system are uncertain, they are recognized as stochastic variables. Taking the mentioned failure scenarios into account the probability of failure of a freight vehicle has been computed. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)