Title: Vehicle-trailer stability and handling control: a working system

Authors: Weiwen Deng, Yong H. Lee

Addresses: Electrical and Controls Integration Lab, Research & Development Center, General Motors Corporation, 30500 Mound Road, Warren, MI, 48090-9055, USA. ' Electrical and Controls Integration Lab, Research & Development Center, General Motors Corporation, 30500 Mound Road, Warren, MI, 48090-9055, USA

Abstract: In this paper, a combined feedforward and feedback control design approach is proposed with the aim of improving vehicle-trailer overall system stability while maintaining vehicle-like handling performance. While the feedforward control is designed mainly to improve system steady-state response, the feedback control is primarily designed to improve system transient response by |decoupling| both vehicle and trailer such that each tracks a well-defined second-order reference model. Vehicle testing has been conducted to verify the proposed approach with results indicating that the proposed control method is very effective in achieving required stability while maintaining vehicle-like handling performance.

Keywords: vehicle control; vehicle dynamics; vehicle stability; vehicle handling; vehicle-trailer systems; feedforward control; feedback control; control design; handling performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVAS.2008.023590

International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems, 2008 Vol.6 No.3/4, pp.330 - 341

Published online: 02 Mar 2009 *

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