Unified Chassis Control for Vehicle Rollover Prevention

This paper describes an unified chassis control (UCC) strategy to prevent vehicle rollover and improve maneuverability. In order to detect a danger of rollover, rollover index (RI) which indicates an impending rollover is determined. The rollover index is calculated using estimated roll angle, roll rate and measured lateral acceleration. Lateral and vertical model-based roll state estimators are designed and combined to obtain the vehicle roll state induced by maneuvering and road disturbances. The vehicle mass is adapted to improve the robustness of the roll state estimator. The RI-based rollover mitigation controller (RMC) is designed by integrating the electronic stability control (ESC), active front steering (AFS) and continuous damping control (CDC). The RI/lateral stability-based RMC is also designed to ensure maneuverability. Computer simulation is conducted to evaluate the proposed UCC scheme by using validated vehicle simulation software. From the simulation results, it is shown that the proposed UCC can prevent vehicle rollover and load to improvements in vehicle stability.