Experiments on Quasiperiodic Wheel Shimmy

The lateral vibration of towed wheels—so-called shimmy—is one of the most exciting phenomena of vehicle dynamics. We give a brief description of a simple rig of elastic tire that was constructed for laboratory measurements. A full report is given on the experimental investigation of this rig from the identification of system parameters to the validation of stability boundaries and vibration frequencies of shimmy motion. The experimental results confirm the validity of those tire models that include delay effects. A peculiar quasiperiodic oscillation detected during the experiments is explained by numerical simulations of the nonlinear time-delayed mathematical model.