Robust Steering Control for Active Rollover Avoidance of Vehicles with Elevated Center of Gravity

Abstract

Active safety technologies for reduction of rollover risk are dealing until now primarily with active suspension systems. In this paper a new vehicle dynamics approach is investigated, in which robust steering control is applied to avoid rollovers of vehicles with a high center of gravity. In addition to the driver's steering angle a small auxiliary steering angle is set by an actuator. The control law is based on proportional feedback of the roll rate and the roll acceleration. The parameter space approach helps to design a controller robust w.r.t. the vehicle's velocity and the uncertain height of the center of gravity. The closed loop system is analysed in time and frequency domain by step responses and sensitivity functions and compared with the conventional system. 1 Introduction Accident analysis [1, 2] of vehicles with an elevated center of gravity (CG) suggest a distinction between two major rollover categories. These are rollovers caused by maneuvers on plane surface and trip...