Integrated control of electronic stability program and active suspension system using a priority-weighting mechanism

Abstract

This paper presents a novel vehicle dynamic controller for coordinating the Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and active suspension system (ASS) to improve the directional performance and roll stability of the vehicle. The controller consists of two levels. The upper level is responsible for monitoring system status, determining control objectives, and distributing the active forces. Also, a priority-weighting mechanism is proposed for model predictive control to generate an adaptive multi-objective cost function. Then, the distribution of active forces is obtained by solving a centralized optimization problem. In the lower level, the dynamics of the suspension actuators are taken into consideration in the control of suspension forces for the ASS, and the desired braking forces are achieved through braking torque control for the ESP. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified through numerical simulation by using a nonlinear full vehicle model. The simulation results show that the proposed dynamic controller can significantly improve the yaw and roll performance of the vehicle.