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Safety and minimal transit time are vital during transportation of essential commodities and passengers, especially in winter conditions. Icy roads are the worst driving conditions with the least available friction, leaving valuable cargo and precious human lives at stake. The study investigates the available friction at the tire-ice interface due to changes in key operational parameters. Experimental analysis of tractive performance of tires on ice was carried out indoor, using the terramechanics rig located at the Advanced Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory (AVDL) at Virginia Tech. The friction-slip ratio curves obtained from indoor testing were inputted into TruckSIM, defining tire behavior for various ice scenarios and then simulating performance of trucks on ice. The shortcomings of simulations in considering the effects of all the operational parameters result in differences between findings of indoor testing and truck performance simulations.

Dynamic game theory brings together different features that are keys to many situations in control design: optimization behavior, the presence of multiple agents/players, enduring consequences of decisions and robustness with respect to variability in the environment, etc. In the presented methodology, vehicle stability is represented by a cooperative dynamic/difference game such that its two agents (players), namely, the driver and the direct yaw controller (DYC), are working together to provide more stability to the vehicle system. While the driver provides the steering wheel control, the DYC control algorithm is obtained by the Nash game theory to ensure optimal performance as well as robustness to disturbances. The common two-degree of freedom (DOF) vehicle handling performance model is put into discrete form to develop the game equations of motion.

Vehicle stability is maintained by proper interactions between the driver and vehicle stability control system. While driver describes the desired target path by commanding steering angle and acceleration/deceleration rates, vehicle stability controller tends to stabilize higher dynamics of the vehicle by correcting longitudinal, lateral, and roll accelerations. In this paper, a finite-horizon optimal solution to vehicle stability control is introduced in the presence of driver's dynamical decision making structure. The proposed concept is inspired by Nash strategy for exactly known systems with more than two players, in which driver, commanding steering wheel angle, and vehicle stability controller, applying compensated yaw moment through differential braking strategy, are defined as the dynamic players of the 2-player differential linear quadratic game.

This paper outlines the development of a simulation-based process for assessing the handling performance of a given set of tires on a specific vehicle. Based on force and moment data, a Pacejka tire model was developed for each of the five sets of tires used in this study. To begin with, simple handling metrics including under-steer gradient were calculated using cornering stiffness derived from the Pacejka model. This Pacejka tire model was subsequently combined with a 3DOF non-linear vehicle model to create a simulation model in MATLAB/Simulink®. Other handling metrics were calculated based on simulation results to step and sinusoidal (General Motors Company) steering inputs. Calculated performance metrics include yaw velocity overshoot, yaw velocity response time, lateral acceleration response time and steering sensitivity. In addition to this, the phase lag in lateral acceleration and yaw rate of the vehicle to a sinusoidal steering input were also calculated.

Dynamic “Game Theory” brings together different features that are keys to many situations in control design: optimization behavior, the presence of multiple agents/players, enduring consequences of decisions and robustness with respect to variability in the environment, etc. In previous studies, it was shown that vehicle stability can be represented by a cooperative dynamic/difference game such that its two agents (players), namely, the driver and the vehicle stability controller (VSC), are working together to provide more stability to the vehicle system. While the driver provides the steering wheel control, the VSC command is obtained by the Nash game theory to ensure optimal performance as well as robustness to disturbances. The common two-degree of freedom (DOF) vehicle handling performance model is put into discrete form to develop the game equations of motion. This study focus on the uncertainty in the inputs, and more specifically, the driver's steering input.

Active safety systems have become an essential part of today's vehicles including SUVs and LTVs. Although they have advanced in many aspects, there are still many areas that they can be improved. Especially being able to obtain information about tire-vehicle states (e.g. tire slip-ratio, tire slip-angle, tire forces, tire-road friction coefficient), would be significant due to the key role tires play in providing directional stability and control. This paper first presents the implementation strategy for a dynamic tire slip-angle estimation methodology using a combination of a tire based sensor and an observer system. The observer utilizes two schemes, first of which employs a Sliding Mode Observer to obtain lateral and longitudinal tire forces. The second step then utilizes the force information and outputs the tire slip-angle using a Luenberger observer and linearized tire model equations.