Integrated Vehicle Dynamics and Control

6 System Coupling Mechanism and Vehicle Dynamic Model

6.1 Overview of Vehicle Dynamic Model

With the development of automobile technology, the demands for vehicle handling, comfort, safety and other properties have become higher and higher. The corresponding control technology has emerged, and can be seen in the literature^[1–6], which relates to vehicle suspension, steering, braking, and other subsystems. Since Segel made a comprehensive summary of vehicle dynamics on ImechE held in 1993^[7], entitled “Vehicle ride and handling stability”, vehicle dynamic model has been developed rapidly. With the requirements of improving the overall vehicle performance, the integrated control method has been proposed to achieve this goal.

Many scholars have carried out much research on the modeling of integrated systems. However, the established vehicle dynamics models are mostly a combination of various subsystems. The derived dynamic equations don’t fully reflect the nonlinear coupled relationships and the interrelated effect among the vehicle longitudinal, lateral, and vertical movements. In the actual movements of a moving car, the longitudinal, lateral, and vertical motions are usually coupled tightly, and it is difficult to strictly separate them. In addition, the suspension, braking, and steering control input does not directly control the vehicle longitudinal, lateral, and vertical movements, nor the roll, pitch, and yaw movements although this is done indirectly through the ...