The impact of heterogeneity and order in heavy duty vehicle platooning networks (poster)

It is formally known that by establishing a heavy duty vehicle platoon, the fuel consumption is reduced for the follower vehicle due to the lower air drag. However, it is not clear how the platoon should be formed with respect to the heavy duty vehicle properties. String stability is a well discussed issue in vehicle platooning. However, each vehicle's properties have to be taken into consideration when analyzing the platoon system. In this paper, we analyze one property of heavy duty vehicles - the mass. The results show that the robustness is influenced by the order and physical characteristics of the vehicles in the platoon. When utilizing identical PID controllers for all vehicles in the platoon, it is better to arrange the heaviest vehicle first with decreasing mass order when considering the platoon behavior. However, in reality it is difficult to start rearranging a platoon in the middle of a highway and it would also require V2V-communication. A controller is often optimized for a particular configuration set that can cause slinky effects to the platoon. Therefore, a mass-dependent PID controller is introduced to establish a better platoon behavior for heavy duty vehicles. The results show no slinky effects regardless of the vehicle order in the platoon.