Passive steering systems have been used for some years to control the steering of trailer axles on articulated vehicles. These normally use a 'command steer' control strategy, which is designed to work well in steady-state circles at low speeds, but which generates inappropriate steer angles during transient low-speed maneuvers and at high speeds. In this paper, 'active' steering control strategies are developed for articulated heavy goods vehicles. These aim to achieve accurate path following for tractor and trailer, for all paths and all normal vehicle speeds, in the presence of external disturbances. Controllers are designed to implement the path-following strategies at low and high speeds, whilst taking into account the complexities and practicalities of articulated vehicles. At low speeds, the articulation and steer angles on articulated heavy goods vehicles are large and small-angle approximations are not appropriate. Hence, nonlinear controllers based on kinematics are required. But at high-speeds, the dynamic stability of control system is compromised if the kinematics-based controllers remain active. This is because a key state of the system, the side-slip characteristics of the trailer, exhibits a sign-change with increasing speeds. The low and high speed controllers are blended together using a speed-dependent gain, in the intermediate speed range. Simulations are conducted to compare the performance of the new steering controllers with conventional vehicles (with unsteered drive and trailer axles) and with vehicles with command steer controllers on their trailer axles. The simulations show that active steering has the potential to improve significantly the directional performance of articulated vehicles for a wide range of conditions, throughout the speed range. © VC 2013 by ASME.

Path-Following Steering Control for Articulated Vehicles

This paper presents a closed-loop dynamic simulation-based design method for articulated heavy vehicles (AHVs) with active trailer steering (ATS) systems. AHVs have poor manoeuvrability at low speeds and exhibit low lateral stability at high speeds. From the design point of view, there exists a trade-off relationship between AHVs’ manoeuvrability and stability. For example, fewer articulation points and longer wheelbases will improve high-speed lateral stability, but they will degrade low-speed manoeuvrability. To tackle this conflicting design problem, a systematic method is proposed for the design of AHVs with ATS systems. In order to evaluate vehicle performance measures under a well-defined testing manoeuvre, a driver model is introduced and it ‘drivers’ the vehicle model to follow a prescribed route at a given speed. Considering the interactions between the mechanical trailer and the ATS system, the proposed design method simultaneously optimises the active design variables of the controllers and passive design variables of the trailer in a single design loop (SDL). Through the design optimisation of an ATS system for an AHV with a truck and a drawbar trailer combination, this SDL method is compared against a published two design loop method. The benchmark investigation shows that the former can determine better trade-off design solutions than those derived by the latter. This SDL method provides an effective approach to automatically implement the design synthesis of AHVs with ATS systems.

A closed-loop dynamic simulation-based design method for articulated heavy vehicles with active trailer steering systems

This paper presents an integrated design method for active trailer steering (ATS) systems of articulated heavy vehicles (AHVs). Of all contradictory design goals of AHVs, two of them, i.e. path-following at low speeds and lateral stability at high speeds, may be the most fundamental and important, which have been bothering vehicle designers and researchers. To tackle this problem, a new design synthesis approach is proposed: with design optimization techniques, the active design variables of ATS systems and passive design variables of trailers can be optimized simultaneously; the ATS controller derived from this approach has two operational modes, one for improving lateral stability at high speeds and the other for enhancing path-following at low speeds. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, it is applied to the design of an ATS system for an AHV with a tractor and a full trailer. Simulation results illustrate that compared with the baseline vehicle, the one derived from the design synthesis approach decreases low-speed off-tracking by 35.2% and reduces high-speed rearward amplification ratio by 30.0%. The proposed approach may be used for identifying desired design variables and predicting performance envelopes in the early design stages of AHVs with ATS systems.

An Integrated Design Method for Articulated Heavy Vehicles with Active Trailer Steering Systems

An important design decision for active trailer steering (ATS) systems for articulated heavy vehicles (AHVs) is the trade-off between maneuverability and lateral stability. This paper presents an automated design method for this trade-off. The proposed method has the following features: (1) a design framework for bilevel optimization of ATS systems is formulated; (2) design variables of ATS controllers and trailers are optimized simultaneously; (3) two controllers are designed for the ATS system for improving stability and enhancing maneuverability, respectively; and (4) a driver model is introduced in the virtual vehicle simulation for closed-loop testing maneuvers. The design framework allows automation of vehicle modeling, controller construction, performance evaluation, and design variable selection, and all required design processes are implemented in a single loop. The proposed method is compared to a previously published two-loop design method, showing that the new approach can effectively identify desired variables and predict performance envelopes.

An Automated Design Method for Active Trailer Steering Systems of Articulated Heavy Vehicles

To improve maneuverability and stability of articulated vehicles, we design an active steering controller, including tractor and trailer controllers, based on linear quadratic regulator (LQR) theory. First, a three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) model of the tractor-trailer with steered trailer axles is built. The simulated annealing particle swarm optimization (SAPSO) algorithm is applied to identify the key parameters of the model under specified vehicle speed and steering wheel angle. Thus, the key parameters of the simplified model can be obtained according to the vehicle conditions using an online look-up table and interpolation. Simulation results show that vehicle parameter outputs of the simplified model and TruckSim agree well, thus providing the ideal reference yaw rate for the controller. Then the active steering controller of the tractor and trailer based on LQR is designed to follow the desired yaw rate and minimize their side-slip angle of the center of gravity (CG) at the same time. Finally, simulation tests at both low speed and high speed are conducted based on the TruckSim-Simulink program. The results show significant effects on the active steering controller on improving maneuverability at low speed and lateral stability at high speed for the articulated vehicle. The control strategy is applicable for steering not only along gentle curves but also along sharp curves.

Active steering control strategy for articulated vehicles Project supported by the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University, China (No. IRT0626)

First the effectiveness of command steering of trailers in reducing off-tracking during a 90° turn for a truck with three trailers is examined. In command steering, front trailer axles are ...

K. Rangavajhula

Papers

Command steering of trailers and command-steering-based optimal control of an articulated system for tractor-track following