Sliding Mode-Based Slip Control of Compact Electric Vehicle Truck for Varying Load and Yaw Rate

Abstract

Vehicle stability is a critical problem, especially for compact electric vehicle (EV) trucks, owing to the impact of the cargo weight and cornering characteristics. In this study, this problem was approached by mathematically formulating the change in the understeer characteristics of an EV truck as variable mass understeer gradient (VMUG) according to the vehicle cargo weight to design the reference yaw rate without the need to consider cornering stiffness. Comparison was made with the conventional methods by applying the VMUG-based slip control while simulating the yaw rate and side-slip tracking performance of the compact EV model for normal loading and overloading conditions. The simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method compared to the existing methods. The proposed method has the potential for application for stability enhancement in non-electric and general-purpose vehicles as well.