Title: Braking controllers and steering controllers for combination vehicles

Authors: Scott Kimbrough, Mark Elwell, Chunchih Chiu

Addresses: University of Utah, Mechanical Engineering Deparunent, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. ' University of Utah, Mechanical Engineering Deparunent, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. ' University of Utah, Mechanical Engineering Deparunent, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA

Abstract: Methods for deriving braking controllers and steering controllers for combination vehicles (i.e. low-vehicle and trailer(s) combinations) are described. Central to the development of these controllers is a vehicle model in which the tyre forces are represented as bilinear functions of wheelslip and slipangle. This tyre force representation is valid for tyre forces below saturation levels. It captures the essential trade-off between cornering forces and braking or accelerating forces. Moreover, when the bilinear equations are substituted into the equations of motion, the resulting vehicle model is bilinear. This is important because a large family of control strategies is available for bilinear systems. These control strategies are based on Lyapunov Theory. Many forms of controllers can be derived. In this paper an emergency stop braking controller, a stability enhancement braking controller, and a steering controller are derived. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the braking controllers.

Keywords: bilinear tyre models; braking control; combination vehicles; steering control; vehicle modelling; tyre forces; cornering forces; braking forces; accelerating forces; emergency stop; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.1994.054649

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 1994 Vol.1 No.2, pp.195 - 223

Published online: 18 Jun 2013 *

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