Improving design safety of tractor-trailers by upgrading towing couplers

One major way of increasing efficiency in production, construction and agriculture industries is to use motor- and tractor-trailers for transportation needs. At the same time, a tractor-trailer is a complex and less maneuverable machine in comparison with a single vehicle. Exceeding the velocity regime, especially in the case of tractor-trailers, leads to a loss of stability during linear motion, on curvilinear sections of the trajectory or in complex traffic conditions. Speed limit is a standard prevention method; however, it does not guarantee any acceptable result. Other ways of resolving this issue have almost exhausted their potential. It should be noted that solving this problem is further complicated by a lack of a unified road-movement theory for tractor-trailers - thus, mainly restrictive measures are used. The authors suggested a hypothesis on possible improvement of tractor-trailer safety by means of increasing their motion stability via upgraded design characteristics of towing tractor-trailer couplers. The higher stability would be achieved by raising the damping factor of transverse oscillations by applying lateral disturbing forces. The authors proposed over 55 technical solutions, all protected by certificates of authorship in engineering, of upgrading the towing couplers and providing the increase of tractor-trailer operation safety in various road conditions. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.