Title: Lateral stability classification and active stabilisation of towing taxi-out system based on K-clustering classification

Authors: Jiahao Qin; Weimin Huang

Addresses: Department of Tianjin, Civil Aviation University of China, Dongli, Tianjin, 300100, China ' Department of Tianjin, Civil Aviation University of China, Dongli, Tianjin, 300100, China

Abstract: The towing taxi-out system composed of a tractor and a civil aircraft has the structural characteristics of driving in the front and mass in the back, which leads to accidents such as lateral instability and even system 'folding' when the system is steering. In this paper, a lateral stability evaluation method based on K-means cluster analysis is proposed to characterise the lateral stability state parameters of the system by four parameters of the lateral angular velocity of the tractor, the lateral angular velocity of the civil aircraft, the articulation angle and the articulation angular velocity. The lateral stability of the system is evaluated into four grades, and a fuzzy control-based control method is designed to control the additional lateral moment, and a differential braking method is used to achieve the lateral stability of the system. The simulation results show the evaluation and control method proposed in this paper can effectively ensure the driving safety of the system in the traction departure experiment with Beijing Daxing International Airport as the simulation scenario.

Keywords: traffic engineering; lateral stability; K-means clustering; fuzzy control; graded control.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2025.148182

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2025 Vol.32 No.4, pp.522 - 541

Received: 11 Sep 2024
Accepted: 29 Sep 2024
Published online: 28 Aug 2025 *

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