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A single vehicle on-road rollover accident of a small van is used to examine the effectiveness of the Anti-Rollover Braking System (ARB). The circumstances of the accident are reviewed, and how the accident was modeled using ADAMS. ARB is then added to the vehicle model to examine what would happen if ARB had been on the vehicle. Two cases are examined. One case uses the same steering as in the accident, and one case uses the same path as the accident. In both of these cases, ARB would have prevented the vehicle from rolling over.

A test and simulation process is presented, for improving the rollover resistance of passenger vehicles by engineering design. The process originates from experience in the analysis of over 60 individual LTV rollover cases, related to litigation. The process involves obtaining vehicle data from test measurements, developing ADAMS-based full vehicle and tire computer models, and validating them against measurements from test vehicle limit maneuver performance. With a validated model for a particular vehicle, a wide variety of limit maneuvers can be conveniently simulated with reasonable accuracy. Also, vehicle performance in a specific rollover crash situation can be iteratively determined to match measured evidence. From the vehicle performance, the driver input is available. This can be used to check redesigns, to see if they remain upright with the same driver input as was involved in the original rollover.

Effective computer-aided design of engineering systems requires comprehensive computer-application software that conveniently adapts to the particular engineering design considered. This paper discusses the theoretical background and initial experience with a program intended for computer-aided design of machine-like mechanical systems, and outlines the use of a time-shared graphic terminal for schematic display of program output. The program is applicable to three types of mechanical systems: linear and nonlinear unconstrained dynamic systems, kinematic systems (that is, constrained systems), and multifreedom, constrained systems.