Integrated NMPC-based vehicle stability and tracking control strategy for heavy-duty truck with road bank angle estimation

This paper proposes a vehicle stability and path tracking integrated control strategy based on nonlinear model prediction control (NMPC) for addressing uncertain road bank angle and the stability degradation of heavy-duty trucks during ramp driving. The control strategy encompasses vehicle parameters and road bank angle estimator, in addition to active steering and direct yaw torque integrated controllers, with the objective of enhancing vehicle safety and stability in complex operating conditions. First, considering the influence of road bank angle and body roll angle on lateral motion, a road bank angle and vehicle state estimator based on Kalman filter algorithm is established by using vehicle kinematics and dynamics information. Meanwhile, using the online updated values, the dynamic supervision mechanism considering the road bank angle is established to constrain the vehicle yaw rate and sideslip motion, and a rollover prevention mechanism is also constructed to realize the safety limits in the complex environment. Furthermore, an integrated NMPC-based control method is proposed to improve vehicle stability and path tracking performance in road bank angle environments by incorporating tracking error, rollover prevention and yaw stability constraints into the optimization framework. Finally, the Trucksim/Simulink co-simulation is carried out, whose results show that the proposed NMPC coordinated control strategy can improve the vehicle path tracking accuracy and enhance the vehicle yaw and roll stability under extreme conditions compared with the traditional model prediction control.