Design of active steering and intelligent braking systems for road vehicle handling improvement: A robust control approach

Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) based robust control tools are used for the design of active steering and intelligent braking controllers for handling improvement of road vehicles. Vehicle plane dynamics are expressed in the generic Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) form and static state feedback controllers ensuring robust performance against changing road conditions are designed. First, stable braking on split μ road is taken into consideration. Simulations reveal efficiency of active steering when compared to intelligent braking, ensuring both high vehicle deceleration and low yaw rate and body side slip angle build-up for relatively high μ gradient. Second, the performance of intelligent braking is tested during cornering maneuvers on low μ roads. In all cases, it is shown that static state feedback controllers obtained by the proposed design method can achieve acceptable road handling performance.