Jackknifing Prevention of Tractor-Semitrailer Combination Using Active Braking Control 2015-01-2746

Vehicle jackknifing is generally associated with the loss of yaw stability, and is one of the most common cause of serious traffic accidents involving tractor-semitrailer combinations. In this paper, an active braking control strategy is proposed for jackknifing prevention of a tractor-semitrailer combination on a low friction road. The proposed control strategy is realized via upper-level and lower-level control structures considering braking of both the units. In the upper-level control, the required corrective yaw moments for tractor and semitrailer are generated using a PID controller aiming to reduce errors between the actual yaw rates of tractor-semitrailer and the target yaw rates deduced from a reference model. The corrective yaw moments are achieved through brake torque distribution among the tractor and semitrailer axle wheels in the lower-level control. The effectiveness of the proposed jackknifing prevention control is evaluated in a co-simulation environment involving Matlab/Simulink and TruckSim under two different maneuvers on a slippery road surface. Simulation results show that the proposed control approach is effective in jackknifing prevention of the tractor-semitrailer combinations under high speed maneuvers on low friction surfaces.