Jackknifing Prevention of Tractor-Semitrailer Combination Using Active Braking Control

Vehicle jackknifing is generally associated with the loss of yaw stability, and is one of the most common cause of serious traffic accidents involving tractor-semitrailer combinations. In this paper, an active braking control strategy is proposed for jackknifing prevention of a tractor-semitrailer combination on a low friction road. The proposed control strategy is realized via upper-level and lower-level control structures considering braking of both the units. In the upper-level control, the required corrective yaw moments for tractor and semitrailer are generated using a PID controller aiming to reduce errors between the actual yaw rates of tractor-semitrailer and the target yaw rates deduced from a reference model. The corrective yaw moments are achieved through brake torque distribution among the tractor and semitrailer axle wheels in the lower-level control. The effectiveness of the proposed jackknifing prevention control is evaluated in a co-simulation environment involving Matlab/Simulink and TruckSim under two different maneuvers on a slippery road surface. Simulation results show that the proposed control approach is effective in jackknifing prevention of the tractor-semitrailer combinations under high speed maneuvers on low friction surfaces.