Predictive yaw and lateral control in long heavy vehicles combinations

We consider the problem of controlling the yaw and lateral dynamics in heavy vehicles, consisting of combinations of a truck and multiple towed units. In such heavy vehicle configurations, undesired yaw rate and lateral acceleration amplifications, causing tail swings and lateral instabilities of the towed units, can be observed at high speed. In this paper, we present a predictive control approach to reduce the Rearward Amplification (RWA) of the yaw rate at the rearmost unit in a truck-dolly-semitrailer combination, while bounding the lateral acceleration in order to prevent the roll-over of the rearmost unit. Simulation results with a nonlinear high fidelity vehicle model are presented in a single lane change maneuver, showing that the proposed approach is able to efficiently reduce the yaw rate RWA and limit the lateral accelerations, compared to the uncontrolled vehicle.