Research on the Stability of Three-Axis Vehicles with Coordinated Steering under High-Speed Low-Adhesion Conditions

Three-axle vehicles are widely used in engineering, transportation, and other heavy-duty applications, but they are prone to lateral instability at high speeds or on low-adhesion road conditions, which severely degrades handling stability. To enhance their dynamic performance under extreme operating conditions, this paper proposes a direct yaw-moment control (DYC) strategy based on an incremental linear quadratic regulator (ILQR) for a distributed-drive three-axle vehicle equipped with active front-wheel steering (AFS) and differential drive assist steering (DDAS), thereby improving the accuracy and responsiveness of lateral stability control. Furthermore, to mitigate the mutual coupling and interference among multiple control subsystems, a coordinated steering strategy based on phase-plane analysis is proposed to achieve effective integration and dynamic coordination of AFS, DDAS, and DYC. Co-simulation studies conducted in Matlab/Simulink and TruckSim reveal that the proposed coordinated steering strategy substantially diminishes the peak yaw rate and vehicle sideslip angle across diverse driving conditions, thereby considerably enhancing the lateral stability of the three-axle vehicle during extreme maneuvers.