Safe Predictive Control Allocation for Heavy Vehicle Combinations

Journal article, 2026

The electrification of heavy-duty vehicle combinations enables energy efficiency improvements through regenerative braking, but maximizing energy recovery on low-friction surfaces can reduce lateral tire grip and trigger yaw instabilities such as jackknifing and trailer swing. This paper addresses the critical trade-off between energy efficiency and vehicle safety by proposing a comprehensive longitudinal force control allocation architecture that acts as a supervisory safety barrier for an upper-level energy management controller. Four control strategies—Model Predictive Control (MPC), Model Predictive Heuristic Control (MPHC), Lateral Acceleration Proportional Predictive Control (LAPPC), and Lateral Acceleration Proportional Instantaneous Control (LAPIC)—are developed and evaluated. During safety-critical driving scenarios, these controllers modify and redistribute the requested axle forces and apply supplementary emergency braking to maintain safe operating limits before instabilities occur. High-fidelity simulations show that the predictive control strategies are highly effective at preempting yaw excitation. MPC provides the best performance according to the evaluated stability metrics, with limited additional braking, while the simpler LAPPC relies solely on available onboard sensors, making it well suited for near-term deployment across diverse articulated vehicles without requiring detailed parameter knowledge.