A Three-Dimensional Dynamics Control Framework of Vehicle Lateral Stability and Rollover Prevention via Active Braking With MPC

Abstract

Variable time delays exist between the driver's inputs and the responses of the vehicle dynamic states during a critical steering course. And due to the delay of active brake actuators, a sideslip or a rollover may occur even to a vehicle with a traditional stability control system. In addition, the unnecessary intervention of rollover prevention controller may deteriorate yaw stability of a vehicle in these situations. To mitigate the adverse effect of time delay on vehicle stability control and to realize coordinated stability control, a novel three-dimensional dynamic stability controller (3DDSC) is designed for yaw stability control, yaw–roll stability control and rollover prevention control. The framework consists of a supervisor, an upper controller, and a lower controller. A nonlinear vehicle model is used in the supervisor to predict the vehicle's future states and to determine the control mode and the related controllable areas with active brake method. Then model predictive control is used in the upper controller to calculate the desired tire forces of four wheels under the constraints of the given controllable area; then, the desired tire forces are realized by a lower hydraulic pressure controller. The proposed 3DDSC is evaluated with a CarSim–MATLAB cosimulation and hardware-in-the-loop simulation. The results show that 3DDSC can achieve a seamless integration of lateral stability and rollover prevention in complicated steering maneuvers.