The safety of agricultural tractors’ drivers is a very actual topic, especially when tractors
operate on side slopes, such as in terraced vineyards. This work approaches the problem of
articulated tractors’ stability by modelling, simulating and quantifying the safety of the driver with
respect to both roll and pitch overturns. First of all, an articulated tractor has been modelled and
simplified; after that, a stability index has been defined and calculated in several simulated slope
conditions when the tractor travels along a circular trajectory. Then, the obtained results have been
compared with respect to a conventional tractor. This work is a preliminary study for a tilting test
platform for real vehicles, capable to reproduce real field conditions (slope, obstacles, roughness).
Finally, some directives on how exploiting the obtained results for real-time safety devices have
been formulated.
