A Comparison of Lateral Dynamic Models for Tractor-Trailer Systems

In the literature, researchers studying the lateral dynamics of tractor-trailer systems have each developed their own reduced-order lateral dynamic model, each with their own assumptions, state representations, and derivation methods. Little to no work has been performed to compare the accuracy of these models to each other, nor to validate their results against high-fidelity multi-body simulations or real truck data. The purpose of this paper is to identify several reduced-order lateral dynamic models for tractor-trailer systems present in the current literature, simulate their estimated states through common driving maneuvers, and then compare their estimates against reference data from a high-fidelity multi-body dynamic model. From this comparison, we identify the reduced-order model that maintains the least error from the reference data as the best representation of a real tractor-trailer system. The results of our comparison will be useful to researchers interested in using a reduced-order dynamic model from the literature as the basis for articulation angle estimation, model-predictive control, or adaptive control algorithms for autonomous tractor-semitrailer systems.