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

Ekuase Austin¹, Aduloju Sunday Christopher^1, , Ogenekaro Peter¹, Ebhota Williams Saturday¹ and Dania David E.¹

¹National Engineering Design Development Institute, Nnewi, Nigeria

Cite this paper:
Ekuase Austin, Aduloju Sunday Christopher, Ogenekaro Peter, Ebhota Williams Saturday and Dania David E.. Determination of Center of Gravity and Dynamic Stability Evaluation of a Cargo-type Tricycle. American Journal of Mechanical Engineering. 2015; 3(1):26-31. doi: 10.12691/ajme-3-1-5

Abstract

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 (F_c) for the tricycle model is 0.32g.

Keywords:
dynamic stability center of gravity cargo tricycle tipping treshold yaw motion oversteer

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