Trailer Stabilization Through Active Braking of the Towing Vehicle

This paper discusses the rationale for, and development of, a towing vehicle based active brake control algorithm which assists drivers in the case of an oscillatory instability in a car-trailer system. As part of the rationale, this paper will discuss briefly the challenges the driver faces when loading and equipping the trailer, the factors which attribute to instabilities, and the current technology available to assist the driver of a car-trailer system. This paper will also review the Development Process of the algorithm which included Software in the Loop (SIL) simulation and Rapid Prototyping (RP) techniques. SIL and RP results prove the validity of a towing vehicle based active braking algorithm for stabilizing a trailer.