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The influence of strong crosswinds on safety of different types of road vehicles

  • Stochastics and Probability in Engineering Mechanics
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Abstract

Strong crosswinds have a great influence on the safety of road vehicles. Different vehicle types may have different behavior under strong crosswinds, thereby leading to different dominant accident modes and accident risks. In order to compare the crosswind stability of road vehicles, a probabilistic method based on reliability analysis has been applied in this paper. The crosswind is simulated as a stochastic gust model with nonstationary wind turbulence. The vehicles are classified into several categories. For each vehicle type, a worst case vehicle model and the corresponding aerodynamic coefficients have been identified. Dominant accident modes and failure probabilities have been computed and are compared. The influence of road conditions (dry/wet) and wind directions on the crosswind stability has been taken investigated. The proposed model makes it possible to compare the effect of crosswind on different vehicle types based on a risk analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Engineering Mechanics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Xiaoyu Zhang & Carsten Proppe

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  1. Xiaoyu Zhang
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  2. Carsten Proppe
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Correspondence to Carsten Proppe.

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Zhang, X., Proppe, C. The influence of strong crosswinds on safety of different types of road vehicles. Meccanica 54, 1489–1497 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11012-019-00952-1

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