Reliability-based assessment of vehicle safety in adverse driving conditions

The framework of a reliability-based assessment model of vehicle safety under adverse driving conditions is developed. Such a framework is built based on the advanced transient dynamic vehicle simulation models which can consider the coupling effects between vehicles and adverse driving conditions, such as wind gust, snow-covered or icy road surface and/or curving. The single-vehicle safety index is introduced to provide rational assessment of accident risks by considering uncertainties of critical variables. In order to consider the complicated implicit limit state functions, the response surface method (RMS) is adopted to provide an efficient estimation of accident risks. Finally, a parametric study is conducted to demonstrate the methodology and the impacts of different critical variables on accident risks of a typical truck under several representative hazardous scenarios are investigated. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.