Influence of Uncertainties on Crosswind Stability of Vehicles

Crosswind stability is an important criterion for the modern design of railway and road vehicles. In the past, most of the studies on the influence of crosswind on vehicles are based on deterministic models. This paper investigates the crosswind stability by a stochastic model, in which uncertainties are taken into account. A wind model with nonstationary wind turbulence is developed. As the excitation of the vehicle is a stochastic process, a risk analysis has to be carried out and failure probabilities have to be calculated. The proposed method has been utilized to analyze the crosswind stability of road vehicles and railway vehicles on both straight and curved tracks. Besides, in order to find the most influential parameters, a sensitivity analysis has been undertaken.