New integrated chassis control systems for vehicle handling performance enhancement

This paper investigates the principle of integration of vehicle dynamics control systems by proposing a new control architecture to integrate the following four major functional domains of a vehicle; braking, steering, suspension and driveline. The active control systems include brake-based electronic stability control, active front steering, normal suspension force control and variable torque distribution. Based on the analysis of these four standalone controllers, a novel rule based integration strategy is proposed to improve the vehicle handling. A nonlinear vehicle handling model is developed for this study in Matlab/Simulink. This model contains a sprung mass of six degrees of freedom that includes, longitudinal, lateral, yaw, roll, pitch and bounce and un-sprung masses with wheels at each corner of the vehicle. The simulation results show that this integration strategy enhances the vehicle handling stability in terms of reduction in vehicle yaw rate and side-slip angle that would not be attained in standalone manner.