Title: Development and optimisation of an articulation system to improve intersection turning speed of bus rapid transit vehicle

Authors: Yu-Meng Cai; You-Liang Jiang; Shi-Jin Zhang; Shi-An Chen

Addresses: School of Automotive and Traffic Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China ' School of Automotive and Traffic Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China ' School of Automotive and Traffic Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China ' School of Automotive and Traffic Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China

Abstract: Most bus rapid transit (BRT) vehicles are often slowed down to avoid carriage-folding collisions and carriages not aligning during turning operation, which drops the capacity of intersection and even causes traffic jam. To improve the speed of the BRT vehicle running in the intersection turning route, a new type of articulation system transferring the damping torque and the stiffness torque was developed and optimised. First, the steering dynamics model of the BRT vehicle was established. Second, dynamic steering simulations of the BRT vehicle running in the intersection route with varying parameters were carried out. Lastly, the damping parameter and the stiffness parameter were optimised. The best BRT vehicle steering dynamics performance is achieved at a 12 m/s speed when the damping parameter and the stiffness parameter are set to 3060 N·s/m and 603,490 N/m, respectively.

Keywords: articulation systems; buses; rapid transit vehicles; heavy vehicles; steering dynamics; dynamic modelling; parameter optimisation; intersection turning speed; simulation; damping; stiffness.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2015.071681

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2015 Vol.22 No.3, pp.213 - 235

Received: 17 Aug 2014
Accepted: 24 Mar 2015
Published online: 14 Sep 2015 *

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