Copyright © 2012 Xiujian Yang. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

An optimal reconfiguration control scheme based on control allocation (CA) is proposed to stabilize the yaw dynamics of the tractor-semitrailer vehicle. The proposed control scheme is a two-level structure consisting of an upper level of sliding mode yaw moment controller (SMYC) and a lower optimal brake force distributor (BFD). The upper SMYC is designed to follow the tractor yaw rate and the combination of the hitch angle and trailer slip angle and outputs the corrective yaw moment, respectively, for the tractor and the trailer. The optimal brake force allocation and reconfigurable control problem is transformed to a problem of error minimization and control minimization combination formulated by constrained weighted least squares (CWLS) optimization and further solved with active set (AS) algorithm. Simulation results reveal that the CA technique-based optimal reconfigurable control is rather effective for the tractor-semitrailer vehicle to enhance the yaw stability performance and the reliability in case of actuator failure thanks to the multiple-axle structure enriching the alternatives of possible actuator combinations in CA optimization.