Determination of Center of Gravity and Dynamic Stability Evaluation of a Cargo-type Tricycle

Dynamic stability of vehicles is a major concern to vehicle manufacturers, as this determines how safe a vehicle will be on the road, to passengers and other road users. The location of centre of gravity (CG) on a vehicle determines its stability. The objective of this work is to evaluate the dynamic stability of a modeled cargo tricycle. The mass Properties capability of the SolidWorks software was used to determine the CG location on the tricycle. Result shows that the model will response to side load with a yaw motion and it’s an oversteer vehicle. Therefore it is unstable at high speed above its critical speed. The rollover threshold (Fc) for the tricycle model is 0.32g.

Website: http://www.arjonline.org/engineering/american-research-journal-of-mechanical-and-automation-engineering/