Nonlinear robust control of integrated vehicle dynamics

A new methodology to design the vehicle GCC (global chassis control) nonlinear controller is developed in this paper. Firstly, to handle the nonlinear coupling between sprung and unsprung masses, the vehicle is treated as a mechanical system of two-rigid-bodies which has 6 DOF (degree of freedom), including longitudinal, lateral, yaw, vertical, roll and pitch dynamics. The system equation is built in the yaw frame based on Lagrange's method, and it has been proved that the derived system remains the important physical properties of the general mechanical system. Then the GCC design problem is formulated as the trajectory tracking problem for a cascade system, with a Lagrange's system interconnecting with a linear system. The nonlinear robust control design problem of this cascade interconnected system is divided into two H ∞ control problems with respect to the two sub-systems. The parameter uncertainties in the system are tackled by adaptive theory, while the external uncertainties and disturbances are dealt with the H ∞ control theory. And the passivity of the mechanical system is applied to construct the solution of nonlinear H ∞ control problem. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed controller is validated by simulation results even during the emergency manoeuvre.