An experimental and theoretical investigation into the roll-over of tracked vehicles

The use of high-speed tracked vehicles results in a number of accidents each year, some of which cause the vehicle to roll-over. Rollover caused by striking a low object, e.g. a kerb or tree stump (tripped), is normally thought to be the case but video evidence exists which shows that roll-over is initiated on a flat horizontal surface while the vehicle undergoes a 90° turn (untripped). This work looks at the initiation of roll-over in a tracked vehicle by increasing the lateral coefficient of friction with load transfer. A four-degree-of-freedom vehicle-and-track model is developed to investigate the problem. This work shows that the initiation of roll-over is possibly caused by increasing the lateral coefficient of friction between the track and the ground.