Stability of vehicles under nonstationary crosswind excitation

Strong crosswind gusts have great influence on the stability of railway and road vehicles. They may lead to accidents and also to a discomfort for the road vehicle driver. Risk assessment for overturning of railway and road vehicles is usually calculated based on the stationary situation or at least on wind-tunnel experiments that are mostly carried out with a static vehicle model. Nonstationary excitation due to wind turbulence occurs if the vehicle accelerates or decelerates. Increasing vehicle speed relative to wind speed will move the energy content of the spectrum to a higher frequency range. It has been realized that nonstationary wind has a great influence on vehicle stability especially when the vehicle speed is high. Thus in order to assess the overturning risk in a more realistic way, a nonstationary wind model together with its interaction with the vehicle should be taken into consideration.This paper proposes a nonstationary wind turbulence model for the investigation of crosswind stability of ground vehicles. A wind model with nonstationary turbulence as well as the wind effects to the moving vehicle in a nonstationary situation (acceleration/deceleration) is described. Nonstationary aerodynamic forces are considered together with the interaction between the moving vehicle system and the wind turbulence. Failure probabilities are computed and reliability analyses are carried out. (© 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)