Brake Control Combined with Prediction to Prevent the Rollover of Heavy Vehicles

In this paper an active brake control to decrease the rollover risk of heavy vehicles is proposed. The brake system is activated when the vehicle comes close to rolling over. To enhance the performance of the active brake, this mechanism is extended with a prediction procedure, in which the critical values are predicted in advance using a short time interval. In order to predict an imminent rollover, an observer-based prediction algorithm is proposed to estimate in advance the load transfers. The control design is based on the Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) Model of yaw-roll dynamics of heavy vehicles. In the control design both the performance demands and the model uncertainties are taken into consideration. The control mechanism is demonstrated in a double lane change maneuver. Copyright c 2005 IFAC