A Nonlinear Tire Blowout Stabilizer Based on a Novel Integral Terminal Sliding Mode Controller

This paper proposes an automatic corrective safety controller design and evaluation based on braking/traction actuation to enhance the stability of a ground vehicle subjected to a tire blowout. Along with the nonlinear Dugoff's tire model, a nonlinear planar seven degrees of freedom control-oriented vehicle model is developed and validated using MSC Adams/car package. The proposed novel control-oriented model accounts for the longitudinal dynamics, large steering and slip angles, and the nonlinearities associated with the vehicle/tire coupled system. In consequence, a distributive torque control technique in the framework of the integral terminal sliding mode controller is established. The integral action is employed in the sliding surfaces to enhance the steady-state tracking performance of the closed-loop system. The controller distributes the control torque demand among the three inflated tires excluding the blown tire to counteract the blowout-induced yawing disturbance. Two control strategies are introduced to facilitate controller practical implementation in both electric and conventional vehicles. The results indicate that the proposed controller is perfectly competent to stabilize the vehicle and robustly track the desired trajectory in a straight line and curvilinear motions as well as under nonlinear operating conditions.