Implementing the Milliken Moment Method using Controlled Dynamic Simulation

The Milliken Moment Method (MMM) can be used to quantify the constraints imposed on vehicle stability and controllability by front and rear tire traction limitations. The main aspect of the Milliken Moment Method is the plot of vehicle's yaw moment versus lateral acceleration for given vehicle sideslip and steering angle ranges. This plot is typically called the Milliken Moment Diagram (MMD). This paper proposes a dynamic simulation approach to implementing the MMM that emulates the traditional experimental one. The approach embeds a vehicle dynamics model in a control loop that maintains a constant desired sideslip angle, and integrates the resulting controlled vehicle system model in time to generate the MMD. A numerical example demonstrates the approach and shows that the while the proposed approach may not be as efficient as the traditional computer based approach, it has the advantage of being able to used a variety of existing vehicle dynamics models with commonly available numerical simulation packages in order to generate the MMD's.