To address the rollover risk of six-axle semi-trailers due to their large mass,
high center of gravity, and multi-axle articulation, a lateral force balance
anti-rollover strategy based on the Ackermann steering principle is proposed. By
establishing the wheel angle constraint equations for the full-wheel steering
system of the six-axle semi-trailer, a rigid-body dynamic model considering the
articulation characteristics is developed. The key control and observation
parameters are included in the wheel angles, center of gravity lateral offset,
yaw angular velocity, sideslip angle, and lateral load transfer rate. An SMC-PID
joint controller is designed, in which the third axle steering angle of the
tractor is optimized by the SMC controller, and the trailer’s three-axle
steering angle tracking control is achieved by the PID controller. The nonlinear
accumulation of centrifugal force and dynamic load transfer under high-speed
emergency lane change conditions is suppressed by a hierarchical control
mechanism. The joint simulation results from TruckSim and Simulink indicate
that, under the double lane change scenario with 88 km/h, the lateral force
balance strategy reduces the rollover angles of the tractor and trailer by 85.5%
and 86.9%, respectively, and the center of gravity lateral offset is improved by
77.5% and 92.3%; under the double lane change scenario with 80 km/h, compared
with the active steering strategy of the trailer, the lateral load transfer rate
fluctuation is reduced to the percentile level, and the rollover angles decrease
by 62.9% and 65.3%.
