Abstract
Keywords: four wheel steering vehicle, handling stability, simulation, analysis
Safety in driving a vehicle with high speed is extremely crucial. Due to the large yaw rate and sideslip angle of a vehicle body moving in high speed, the turning of vehicle cannot be well controlled by only steering the front wheels. However the four wheel steering vehicle (4WS) has the following merits: When the vehicle takes a turn at low speed, the radius will be small, and the car can turn actively, and when the vehicle takes a turn at high speed, the radius will become big, it can change the traffic lane rapidly, and the body does not have a big swinging. Therefore, the four wheel steering vehicle can improve vehicle´s handling stability performance effectively at high speed, and agility performance at low speed.
This paper takes the four wheel steering (4WS) as the study-object. Firstly, two freedom degrees vehicle mathematical model was established, based on the front wheel steering angle proportion to the rear wheel steering angle, the handling and stability performance was analyzed. Then using the ADAMS software, the vehicle virtual prototype model of 4WS and 2WS was established, according to different speed, the handling and stability performance was analyzed. Based on the simulation result, it is evident that the handling and stability performance of 4WS is better than 2WS.