Coordinated Chassis Control Based on Vehicle Lateral Acceleration Using Fuzzy Logic Control

This paper presents an advanced coordination of integrated control system which consist of three different controllers namely Electronic Stability Control (ESC), Active Front Steering (AFS), and Active Suspension (AS) using Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) in order to improve vehicle handling, cornering stability, and rollover prevention with anti-lock braking system (ABS) to avoid wheel locking during generating differential braking by ESC control. Based on a well-developed and validated fourteen degrees of freedom full vehicle model with non-linear tire characteristics, a reference yaw-roll plane vehicle model is introduced to compare and therefore control the yaw rate, side slip angle, and roll angle of the vehicle body. For rollover prevention indices, the dynamic load transfer ratio is defined to check the effectiveness of the proposed controller. The Coordination chassis control is based on the lateral acceleration value as input to FLC, and the outputs are the increment factors to the three controllers varying from zero to one. Three membership functions are chosen to represent the lateral acceleration as input to the supervisor controller, to define the control authority for each actuator. The universe of discourse for each membership function is selected according to the study of the effect of each controller stand alone in vehicle performance. The numerical modelling is carried out through the MATLAB / Simulink environment which suits the control and optimization process. Different standard test maneuvers namely J-turn, fishhook, and double lane change have been carried out by considering standard test maneuvers with different driving speeds. The simulation results are compared during three cases namely, the uncontrolled system, the combined controller, and the proposed coordinated controller. The results show a substantial improvement of the vehicle stability in terms of vehicle lateral acceleration, side slip angle, yaw rate, roll angle, and the for the developed coordinated controller compared to combined controller or the conventional system without control.