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At present, the active safety and stability of heavy vehicles have becoming big concern among the road transportation industry. The purpose of this paper is to specify the research stability and safety of heavy vehicles those set up the accurate and reliable dynamic vehicle reference model and search the method to improve the stability and safety of tractor and semitrailer. A Multi-objective control algorithm was studied to differential braking based on linear quadratic regulator (LQR) control method. Simulation results show that the multi-objective control algorithm can effectively improve the vehicle driving stability and safety.

Both active front wheel steering (AFS) and differential braking control (DBC) can improve the vehicle handling and stability. In this article, an AFS strategy and a DBC strategy are proposed and compared. The strategies are as follows: A yaw instability judging module and a rollover instability judging module are put forward to determine whether the coach is in a linear state and whether the additional torque/angle module should be actuated. The additional torque module based on linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and the additional steering wheel angle module based on adaptive proportion integral differential (PID) fuzzy controller are designed to make the actual yaw rate and sideslip angle track the reference yaw rate and sideslip angle. Under some typical driving conditions such as sinusoidal, J-turning, crosswind, and straight-line brake maneuver on the μ-split road, simulation tests are carried out for the coach with no control, DBC strategy, and AFS control, respectively.

This paper sets up a simplified dynamic model for simulating the yaw/roll stability of heavy tractor-semitrailer using Matlab/Simulink. A linear quadratic regulator (LQR) based on partial-state feedback controller is used to optimize the roll stability of the vehicle. The control objective for optimizing roll stability is to be reducing the lateral load transfer rate while keeping the suspension angle less than the maximum allowable angle. The simulation result shows that the LQR controller is effective in the active roll stability control of the heavy tractor-semitrailer.

This paper presents a fault-tolerant control (FTC) method for four-wheel independently driven and steered (4WIS/4WID) electric vehicles based on a reconfigurable control allocation to increase the flexibility for vehicle control and improve the safety of vehicle after the steering actuator fails. The proposed fault tolerant control method consists of the following three parts: 1) a fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) module that monitors vehicle steering condition, detects and diagnoses actuator failures; 2) an upper controller that computes the generalized forces/moments to track the desired vehicle motion and trajectory; 3) a reconfigurable control allocator that optimally distributes the generalized forces/moments to four wheels. The FTC approach based on the reconfigurable control allocation reallocates the generalized forces/moments among healthy steering actuators and driving motors once the actuator failures is detected.

With the popularity of electrification and driver assistance systems on vehicle dynamics and controls, the steering performance of the vehicle put forward higher requirements. Thus, the steer-by-wire technology is becoming particularly important. Through specific control algorithm, the steer-by-wire system electronic control unit can receive signals from other sensors on the vehicle, realize the personalized vehicle dynamics control on the basis of understanding the driver’s intention, and grasp the vehicle movement state. At the same time, to make these driver assistance systems better cooperate with human drivers, reduce system frequent false warning, full consideration of mutual adaptation for the systems and the driver’s characteristics is critical. This paper focuses on the steering performance of steer-by-wire vehicle. Feature parameters are obtained from the virtual turning experiment designed on the driving simulator experimental platform.

With rapid development of the automobile industry and the growing maturity of the automotive electronic technologies, the distributed-traction electric vehicle with four-wheel-distributed steering/braking/traction systems is regarded as an important development direction. With its unique chassis structure, it is the ideal benchmark platform used to evaluate active safety systems. The distributed-traction electric vehicle with four-wheel-distributed steering system is essentially full drive-by-wire vehicle. With its flexible chassis layout and high control degrees-of-freedom, the full drive-by-wire electric vehicle acted as a kind of redundant system is an ideal platform for the research of integrated control. In this treatise, the longitudinal dynamics of the electric vehicle as well as its lateral and yaw motions are controlled simultaneously.

Aiming at achieving the economy and safety of downhill brake process (running downward along a long slope at a constant velocity) of commercial vehicles, an integrated control strategy of the main brake system and auxiliary brake systems is proposed. Based on Electronic Controlled Braking System (EBS), the strategy distributes braking force to each brake system and each axle according to the thermodynamic feature of them and the wear loss of each brake lining, in order to achieve economy at the premise of safety. A simulation is conducted based on MATLAB/Simulink and TruckSim. Simulation results show that the strategy proposed could control the temperature of each brake system at a rational value, and the balanced wear loss of brake linings is facilitated, thus, the safety and economy of downhill brake is ensured.

The hybrid electric city bus, which consists of the electric motor and battery, is obviously different from the traditional buses. This paper focuses on optimizing the characteristics of the automatic mechanical transmission in hybrid electric city bus and does the following studies: firstly, in order to reduce the fuel consumption, the transmission ratio and some structural parameters are optimized with CRUISE software; secondly, the volume and weight of the transmission structure is reduced and optimized by numerical optimization approach, with the limitation of the structural reliability.

The commercial vehicle is widely used in the overland transport. A prediction is given on the 9th annual China automotive industry forum that the number of the global commercial vehicles will reach eight million by the year of 2016. However, since the distance between its gravity centre and the ground is larger than that of the passenger vehicle, considering its comparatively short wheelbase, the rollover accident, which is fatal to the drivers and always makes enormous loss of merchandises, easily occurs in the case of commercial vehicles. As the number of the commercial vehicle is increasing fast, the accidents will occur more frequently, the losses will be increasingly enormous. To solve the problem, many researches about rollover early warning systems have been done. In most cases, it is assumed that the references of the vehicle are given.

The simulation of electro-pneumatic components used in brake systems of commercial vehicles is of great importance in order to understand their characteristics for developing a control logic and improve the braking performance. As the goal of improving the performance of the commercial vehicle pneumatic EBS(Electronically controlled Braking System), static and dynamic characteristics of proportional relay valve for commercial vehicle pneumatic EBS have been simulated by using MATLAB/Simulink environment and validated by testing on hardware-in-the-loop test bench focused on its pressure hysteresis characteristic. The simulation and test results show that the mathematic model for proportional relay valve characteristics is reasonable and reliable, and this simulation tool can be used for research and developing of pneumatic EBS system for commercial vehicle effectively.

With vehicle platooning becoming an important research field in recent years, it is now imperative to introduce platoons as part of the dynamic environment, considering overtaking and merging possibilities. This article studies optimal speed trajectories and longitudinal control with optimized energy efficiency for an autonomous vehicle with several preceding platoons and full terrain information. It aims at improving the energy efficiency of vehicles with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). A forward discrete dynamic programming (DDP) algorithm with distance as the discretization basis is used to derive speed trajectories in the trade-off between air drag reduction and energy saved by utilizing the road slope information. The problem is decomposed into decisions whether to overtake or to merge into the nearest platoon with the assumption of sufficient distance among platoons.

The quality of the brake system is a significant safety factor in commercial vehicles on the roads. With the development of automobile technology, the single function ABS system didn't meet active safety requirements of the user. The Electronically Controlled Brake System (EBS) system will replace the ABS system to become the standard safety equipment of commercial vehicles in the near future. EBS can be said an enhanced ABS system, it contains load sensor, brake valve sensor and pressure sensor of chamber, etc, and it is more advantages than ABS. This paper describes a flexible integrated test bench for ABS/EBS Electronic Control Unit (ECU) based on Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation technique. It consists of most commercial vehicle pneumatic braking system components (from brake pedal valve, brake caliper to brake chambers), and uses the dSPACE real-time simulation system to communicate to the hardware I/O interface.

A fault tolerant control (FTC) approach based on reconfigurable control allocation for four-wheel independently driven and steered (4WID/4WIS) electric vehicles against driving motor failures is proposed in order to improve vehicle safety, performance and maneuverability after the driving motor failures. The proposed fault tolerant control method consists of the following three parts: 1) a fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) module that monitors vehicle driving condition, detects and diagnoses actuator failures; 2) a motion controller that computes the generalized forces/moments to track the desired vehicle motion using model predictive control method; 3) a reconfigurable control allocator that optimally distributes the generalized forces/moments to four wheels aiming at minimizing the total tire usage. The FTC approach is based on the reconfigurable control allocation which reallocates the generalized forces/moments among healthy actuators once the actuator failures is detected.

Nowadays, the endurance mileage of electric vehicle is commonly short. For the purpose of enhancing the endurance mileage of 4WD electric vehicles, this paper proposes a new control strategy based on the generation efficiency of in-wheel motors. When the brake strength is low, the strategy defines the torque on which the motor has the highest generate efficiency as the upper limit of the braking torque of the front axle. What's more, the proportion of mechanical braking force is reduced. Because of these, the vehicle has a higher generation power. The simulation model is built up by using Matlab/Simulink and CarSim software, and the strategy is simulated under several driving cycles. The result shows that, comparing with the two traditional braking force distribution strategies, the new strategy can obviously improve the regenerative efficiency.

In order to improve the braking energy recovery, a parallel hybrid electric bus simulation model with electric braking system (EBS) was established by co-simulation platform for the TruckSim and Matlab/Simulink in this paper. EBS makes the front and rear shaft braking force arbitrarily distributed, which is more effective to improve the rate of energy recovery and the braking stability. A braking force distribution algorithm for hybrid electric bus based on EBS was designed in this paper. Under the premise to meet the driver's needs and the ECE regulations, this braking force distribution method focuses on making the braking force distribute to the drive shaft to a maximum extent, so as to obtain the maximum energy recovery rate by the utilization of the motor regenerative braking. At last, the simulation in different operating conditions was used to analyze the braking energy utilization and the braking performance based on the simulation model.

Steering-By-Wire (SBW) system has advantages of advanced vehicle control system, which has no mechanical linkage to control the steering wheel and front wheels. It is possible to control the steering wheel actuator and front wheels actuator steering independently. The goal of this paper is to use a joystick to substitute the conventional steering wheel with typical vehicle SBW system and to study a variable steering ratio design method. A 2-DOF vehicle dynamic reference model is built and focused on the vehicle steering performance of drivers control joystick. By verifying the results with a hardware-in-the-loop simulation test bench, it shows this proposed strategy can improve vehicle maneuverability and comfort.

Taking a good longitudinal braking performance on flat and level road of tractor and semi-trailer combination as a target, in order to achieve an ideal braking force distribution among axles, while the vehicle deceleration is just depend on the driver's intention, not affected by the variation of semi-trailer mass, the paper proposes a model based vehicle mass identification and braking force distribution strategy. The strategy identifies the driver's braking intention via braking pedal, estimates semi-trailer's mass during the building process of braking pressure in brake chamber, distributes braking force among axles by using the estimated mass. And a double closed-loop regulation of the vehicle deceleration and utilization adhesion coefficient of each axle is presented, in order to eliminate the bad effect of mass estimation error, and enhance the robustness of the whole algorithm. A simulation is conducted by utilizing MATLAB/Simulink and TruckSim.

Steering movement is the most basic movement of the vehicle, in the car driving process, the driver through the steering wheel has always been to control the direction of the car, in order to achieve their own driving intention. Four Wheel Steering (4WS) is an advanced vehicle control technique which can markedly improve vehicle steering characteristics. Compared with traditional front wheel steering vehicles, 4WS vehicles can steer the front wheels and the rear wheels individually for cornering, according to the vehicle motion states such as the information of vehicle speed, yaw velocity and lateral acceleration. Therefore, 4WS can enhance the handling stability and improve the active safety for vehicles.

In order to improve the braking energy recovery and ensure the braking comfort, a new type of regenerative braking coordinated control algorithm is designed in this paper. The hierarchical control theory is used to the regenerative braking control algorithm. First, the front axle braking force and rear axle braking force are distributed. Then the rear axle motor braking force and mechanical braking force are distributed. Finally, the dynamic coordinated control strategy is designed to control pneumatic braking system and motor braking system. Aimed at keeping the fluctuation of the total braking force of friction and the regenerative braking force small during braking modes switch, a coordinated controller was designed to control the pneumatic braking system to compensate the error of the motor braking force. Based on Matlab/Simulink platform, a parallel hybrid electric bus simulation model with electric braking system (EBS) was established.

Electronic braking system (EBS) of commercial vehicle is developed based on Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), for the purpose of enhancing the braking performance. Based on the previous study, this paper aims at the development and research on the control strategy of advanced electronic braking system for commercial vehicle, which mainly includes braking force distribution and multiple targets control strategy. In the study of braking force distribution control strategy, the mass of vehicle and the axle loads will be calculated dynamically and the braking force of each wheel will be distributed regarding to the axle loads. The braking intention recognition takes the brake pad wear into account when braking uncritically, so it can detect a difference in the pads between the front and the rear axles. The brake assist strategy supports the driver during emergency braking and the braking distance is shortened by the reduction of the braking system response time.