Trailer Stability Sensor

Improper maintenance on semi-trailers has a major impact on the handling and stability. Excessive tire wear, improper tire pressure, and worn or damaged hardware components all significantly reduce trailer stability and increase the likelihood of stability events and accidents. Current safety and maintenance inspections do not adequately capture the overall safety or drivability of the trailer and do not check all factors that influence stability, such as the condition of the suspension system and current load balance. An advanced trailer stability monitoring system, based on accurate truck / trailer stability models and capable of evaluating sensor data over long time periods, could provide the same near-term stability alerts as current ESC systems, while also evaluating long term changes in the vehicle’s dynamics to detect maintenance issues or improper loading that could lead to future accidents. In this effort, a small, low-cost trailer monitoring system will be developed that integrates with a wide range of vehicle and trailer sensors and makes use of accurate system dynamics models to detect both rapid changes in stability that could indicate that something is broken as well as slow changes that could indicate a wear or maintenance issue that could lead to a later failure.