Dr. Taheri
Director ITL
The mission of the Intelligent Transportation Laboratory (ITL) is to improve the road transportation safety through development and application of the state-of-the-art sensors, actuators, and control systems.
Understanding the complexity of the interactions between the tire, the road, and the vehicle and the consequences of vehicle instability due to lack of performance or failure of any or all of the chassis subsystems and the possibility of controlling vehicle stability in such situations are the topics of interest to ITL. This includes all passenger cars and light trucks as well as heavy trucks (including military) and tractor semi-trailers. The subsystems of interest include but are not limited to the tire and wheel assembly (including smart tires), braking systems (including foundation as well as anti-lock braking systems), suspension system (including passive, semi active, active, and MR related dampers, and seat assembly), Steering systems (including electrically assisted power steering, active front and rear steering, and steer by wire), anti roll mitigation and roll stability control, electronic stability control (ESC, ESP, VSC, etc), total vehicle control, and Adaptive Cruise Control.
The lab will eventually become a one of a kind R&D laboratory for tire-vehicle dynamics and control studies with all the necessary test fixtures required to improve the safety of the future road transportation system. In addition to the equipment that will be built as needed and purchased as the budget allows, several software packages will be developed in order to simulate tire-vehicle handling and ride performance, develop control algorithms, and process the measured road data.
One such equipment which is under construction is a Simbuck which will embed brake system hardware in the loop for development of VSC and ABS control algorithms. The Simbuck will be capable of connecting to the Motion Base Simulator for a more realistic control algorithm evaluation environment.
Rollover Stability & Control
- Dynamic stability of vehicles
Click to download Word Doc file of Tire Trailer Capabilities
Saied Taheri staheri@vt.edu Phone: 434.766.6758
Dr. Taheri is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. He is the director of the Tire Vehicle Engineering Research Lab (part of Virginia Tech's Center for Vehicle Systems and Safety). Dr. Taheri conducted research in tire-vehicle dynamics and chassis development in the automotive industry for 18 years before becoming a faculty member at Virginia Tech. His research expertise is in tire-vehicle dynamics, controllable chassis subsystems, objective vehicle measurement and data analysis, and steering and suspension synthesis.
The ITL facility and the office of Dr. Taheri are located at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (www.ialr.org) in Danville, Virginia, which is a little over two hours drive from the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg. In partnership with Virginia Tech, the Institute is a state-of-the-art facility that serves as a catalyst for transforming the community and economy of Southside Virginia through advanced technology.