Modeling and parameter identification of a tractor semitrailer/driver closed-loop system using the Simulated Annealing (SA) optimization approach

Identifying the dynamics and parameters for an articulated heavy vehicle/driver (tractor semitrailer/driver) system is presented in this paper. The dynamic behaviour of the vehicle system is studied by setting up a closed-loop control model of a vehicle/driver system that included a three degree of freedom (3-DOF) tractor semitrailer lateral dynamic model and a driver steering model. It is assumed that the driver steering control model responds to the vehicle state vector following a time delay. The inherent driver steering control parameters to be identified are the state vector´s coefficients, here defined as an optimal control vector. The Simulated Annealing (SA) optimization method is used to search for this control vector. The results show that this method (SA) gives a good convergence rate and robustness for the closed-loop vehicle/driver system under study. Various simulations and sensitivity analysis are also performed and presented.