Decoupling control of active suspension and four-wheel steering based on Backstepping-ADRC with mechanical elastic wheel

Abstract

Mechanical elastic wheel (MEW) has the advantages of explosion-proof and prick-proof, which is conducive to the safety and maneuverability of the vehicle. However, the research on the performance of the full vehicle equipped with MEW is rare. Considering the particular properties of the radial and cornering stiffness of MEW, this paper aims to take into account both ride comfort and yaw stability of the vehicle equipped with the MEW through a nonlinear control method. Firstly, a 9-DOF nonlinear full vehicle model with the MEW tire model is constructed. The tire model is fitted based on experimental data, which corrects the impacts of vertical load on the cornering characteristic of the MEW. Then the full vehicle system is decoupled into four subsystems with a single input and a single output each according to active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) technology. In this process, the coupling relationship between different motions of the original system is regarded as the disturbance. Afterward, a novel nonlinear extended state observer is proposed, which has a similar structure of traditional linear extended state observer but smaller estimation error. Next, the control law of Backstepping-ADRC for different subsystems are derived respectively based on the Lyapunov theory. For the first time, the Backstepping-ADRC method is applied to the decoupling control of four-wheel steering and active suspension systems. Furthermore, the parameters of the controllers are adjusted through a multi-objective optimization scheme. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controller, especially when encountering some disturbances. The indices of vehicle body attitude and ride comfort are improved significantly, and also the yaw stability is guaranteed simultaneously.