Leveling Control of Hillside Tractor Body Based on Fuzzy Sliding Mode Variable Structure

Abstract

To address the issues that arise when auto-leveling the vehicle body of a hillside tractor under complex working conditions, an auto-leveling control system was developed based on a newly developed hillside tractor and four-point body leveling mechanism. In this approach, leveling accuracy and stability were improved by adopting a sliding mode variable structure control algorithm based on fuzzy switching gain adjustment to achieve real-time dynamic auto-leveling control. To obtain curves of front and rear axle leveling displacement, speed, flow, pressure and body tilting angle during the leveling process, AMEsim/Simulink co-simulation was used to simulate and analyze the control system. The simulation results revealed that the tractor achieves a good leveling effect under complex working conditions in hilly and mountainous areas; the tractor can remain within a ±2° tilting angle range during the leveling process and can return to 0° after leveling, demonstrating good dynamic stability. To further assess the algorithm, a model of the system was submitted to live-testing on a custom-built auto-leveling test bench. Comparison of the test and simulation results revealed a close agreement between the two, indicating that the self-leveling control system and control algorithm developed in this study have high leveling accuracies. The results reported in this paper could provide assistance with or in reference to obtaining solutions to the problems of tractor body leveling in hilly and mountainous areas.