This thesis investigates the principle of integrated vehicle dynamics control through proposing a new control configuration to coordinate active steering subsystems and
dynamic stability control (DSC) subsystems. The active steering subsystems include Active Front Steering (AFS) and Active Rear Steering (ARS); the dynamic stability control subsystems include driveline based, brake based and driveline plus brake based DSC subsystems.
A nonlinear vehicle handling model is developed for this study, incorporating the load transfer effects and nonlinear tyre characteristics. This model consists of 8 degrees of freedom that include longitudinal, lateral and yaw motions of the vehicle and body roll motion relative to the chassis about the roll axis as well as the rotational dynamics of four wheels. The lateral vehicle dynamics are analysed for the entire handling region and two distinct control objectives are defined, i.e. steerability and stability which correspond to yaw rate tracking and sideslip motion bounding, respectively.
Active steering subsystem controllers and dynamic stability subsystem controller are designed by using the Sliding Mode Control (SMC) technique and phase-plane method, respectively. The former is used as the steerability controller to track the reference yaw rate and the latter serves as the stability controller to bound the sideslip
motion of the vehicle. Both stand-alone controllers are evaluated over a range of different handling regimes. The stand-alone steerability controllers are found to be
very effective in improving vehicle steering response up to the handling limit and the stand-alone stability controller is found to be capable of performing the task of maintaining vehicle stability at the operating points where the active steering subsystems cannot.
Based on the two independently developed stand-alone controllers, a novel rule based integration scheme for AFS and driveline plus brake based DSC is proposed to optimise the overall vehicle performance by minimising interactions between the two subsystems and extending functionalities of individual subsystems. The proposed integrated control system is assessed by comparing it to corresponding combined
control. Through the simulation work conducted under critical driving conditions, the proposed integrated control system is found to lead to a trade-off between stability and limit steerability, improved vehicle stability and reduced influence on the longitudinal vehicle dynamics.