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

Journal article, 2012

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.