Utilization of Actuators to Improve Vehicle Stability at the Limit: From Hydraulic Brakes Toward Electric Propulsion

Abstract

The capability of over-actuated vehicles to maintain stability during limit handling is studied in this paper. A number of important differently actuated vehicles, equipped with hydraulic brakes toward more advanced chassis solutions, are presented. A virtual evaluation environment has specifically been developed to cover the complex interaction between the driver and the vehicle under control. In order to fully exploit the different actuators setup, and the hard nonconvex constraints they possess, the principle of control allocation by nonlinear optimization is successfully employed. The final evaluation is made by exposing the driver and the over-actuated vehicles to a safety-critical double lane change. Thereby, the differently actuated vehicles are ranked by a quantitative indicator of stability.