GeoTrack: An efficient simulation tool for the analysis of heavy vehicle manoeuvrability

Abstract

The road space utilised by a heavy goods vehicle during low-speed manoeuvring has direct safety and operational implications. This is especially true for vehicles which are longer/wider than usual, such as abnormal loads vehicles. The same applies to vehicles that are required to meet certain performance-based manoeuvrability criteria, such as those participating in the South African “Smart Truck” programme. For both abnormal loads vehicles and many “Smart Trucks”, route approval is required which is often restricted due to concerns over manoeuvrability at particular challenging road sections. GeoTrack is a simulation tool which is able to efficiently analyse the manoeuvrability of any vehicle combination performing any turning manoeuvre. The tool has been tailored for both general user-defined analyses based on satellite images of the road section of interest, as well as for the requirements of the Smart Truck programme. Despite requiring only basic vehicle dimensional data, the tool captures >95% of the performance of competing software packages which are expensive and highly time intensive. In this paper we will give an overview of the tool and its capabilities, discuss how it has aided ongoing industry and research projects, and present a novel validation study conducted on a full-scale heavy goods vehicle.