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.