Development of a roll-coupled hitch for truck/trailers

Truck/trailer configurations, consisting of a truck connected to a trailer via a pintle hitch, are widely used throughout Canada and the world and have proven very versatile. However, the pintle connection does not provide any roll-coupling between the truck and trailer making these configurations less dynamically stable than tractor/semi-trailer configurations. Previous research has shown that the performance of these configurations could be improved through the addition of roll-coupling. Based on these findings, Feric and Wolf Trailers Inc. fabricated two prototype hitches and initiated testing in 2009. This paper summarizes the results of torsional strength tests completed for both prototype hitches, as well stability tests conducted for a truck/pony trailer equipped with the Wolf trailer hitch. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E219320.