Kacani, V.; Stribersky, A.; Troger, H.; Zeman, K. Dynamics and bifurcations in the motion of tractor-semitrailer vehicles. (English) Zbl 0646.70024 Oscillation, bifurcation and chaos, Proc. Annu. Semin., Toronto/Can. 1986, CMS Conf. Proc. 8, 485-499 (1987). [For the entire collection see Zbl 0618.00006.] A mechanical system is set up to represent the motion of a tractor- semitrailer vehicle on a flat or inclined road. The driver is simulated by a controller. The system is modelled by a set of nineteen ordinary differential equations. Different types of losses of stability of the straight line steady state motion of the vehicle with and without driver control are investigated. The nonlinear stability analysis is done by means of centre manifold theory and singularity theory. Reviewer: P.Smith MSC: 70K20 Stability for nonlinear problems in mechanics 37G99 Local and nonlocal bifurcation theory for dynamical systems 70B15 Kinematics of mechanisms and robots 34C15 Nonlinear oscillations and coupled oscillators for ordinary differential equations Keywords:bifurcations; tractor-semitrailer vehicle; losses of stability; straight line steady state motion; driver control; nonlinear stability analysis; centre manifold theory; singularity theory Citations:Zbl 0618.00006 PDFBibTeX XML