Comparative Study of Tire Models Applied to Electronic Stability Control in Automotive Simulator

Automotive tires are crucial in vehicle dynamics, generating essential forces between the pavement and the vehicle. Active safety systems like Electronic Stability Control (ESC) rely on accurate tire force models. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the Pacejka Magic Formula (reference model), the brush model, and a proposed gain-saturation model using a single-track (bicycle) model with three degrees of freedom to evaluate lateral dynamics. Simulations conducted with a 14 Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) vehicle in VI-CarRealTime (VI-CRT) and analyzed in MATLAB revealed a significant correlation between simpler models and the benchmark reference for most relevant lateral vehicle dynamic variables, highlighting their capabilities and limitations through transient and stationary maneuvers. Simulation scenarios of the closed-loop ESC control system with the proposed tire models were carried out in real-time automotive software to compare performance with ESC homologation maneuver.