This thesis investigates the use of an active anti-roll bar as a means of improving the handling of an off-road vehicle. The active anti-roll bar consists of a stiff anti-roll bar and a hydraulic actuator at the one end between the anti-roll bar and the rear axle of the vehicle. The system is designed so that the anti-roll bar can be preloaded in both directions by the actuator. The displacement of the hydraulic actuator is close loop controlled to be a function of the lateral acceleration of the vehicle, which is measured by an accelerometer. For this study, full vehicle simulations were done in ADAMS/View to predict the response of the proposed solutions. A Land Rover Defender 110 was used as the test vehicle to verify the results of the simulations. Constant radius tests and the severe double-lane-change manoeuvre, which are standard handling tests, were used to determine the vehicle’s handling performance. Handling performance was quantified by measuring the body roll angle during the manoeuvre and noting the maximum roll angle. The effect of the active anti-roll bar on ride comfort was measured by driving over Belgian paving at a constant speed. The results show that the proposed system reduces the body roll angle to zero up to a lateral acceleration of 0.4 g during steady state handling and provided a 74% improvement in maximum body roll angle during a double-lane-change-manoeuvre at 70 km/h. The system has no detrimental effect on the ride comfort of the vehicle. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering / unrestricted

Active anti-roll bars have recently found greater acceptance among premium car manufacturers and optimal application of this technology has emerged as an important field of research. This thesis investigates the potential of implementing active anti-roll bars in a passenger vehicle with the purpose of increasing customer value. For active anti-roll bars, customer value is defined in terms of vehicle’s ride comfort and handling performance. The objective with this thesis is to demonstrate this value through development of a control algorithm that can reflect the potential improvement in ride comfort and handling. A vehicle with passive anti-roll bars is simulated for different manoeuvres to identify the potential and establish a reference for the development of a control algorithm and for the performance of active anti-roll bars. While ride is evaluated using single-sided cosine wave and single-sided ramps, handling is evaluated using standardized constant radius, frequency response and sine with dwell manoeuvres.The control strategy developed implements a combination of sliding mode control, feed forward and PI-controllers. Simulations with active anti-roll bars showed significant improvement in ride and handling performance in comparison to passive anti-roll bars. In ride comfort, the biggest benefit was seen in the ability to increase roll damping and isolating low frequency road excitations. For handling, most significant benefits are through the system’s ability of changing the understeer behaviour of the vehicle and improving the handling stability in transient manoeuvres. Improvement in the roll reduction capability during steady state cornering is also substantial. In conclusion, active anti-roll bars are undoubtedly capable of improving both ride comfort and handling performance of a vehicle. Although the trade-off between ride and handling performance is significantly less, balance in requirements is critical to utilise the full potential of active anti-roll bars. With a more comprehensive control strategy, they also enable the vehicle to exhibit different driving characteristics without the need for changing any additional hardware.

La stabilité en roulis des véhicules est un problème de sécurité très critique, en particulier pour les poids lourds. Actuellement, la plupart des poids lourds sont équipés de systèmes de barres anti-roulis passifs. Malheureusement ceux-ci ne sont pas capables, en général, de surmonter les situations critiques. Cette thèse se concentre sur les systèmes de barres anti-roulis actifs, qui constituent l'approche la plus communément utilisée pour améliorer la stabilité en roulis des poids lourds. Le travail de recherche de cette thèse est divisé en trois parties principales. Dans la première partie, un modèle intégré est développé, comprenant quatre actionneurs hydrauliques commandés par des servo-valves, associés à un modèle linéaire lacet-roulis de poids lourd. Dans la deuxième partie, le système anti-roulis actif est développé suivant deux méthodologies de contrôle dans le cadre LTI: LQR et Hinfty. Dans la troisième partie, une approche LPV, basée sur le maillage, est utilisée pour synthétiser le contrôleur Hinfty/LPV de barre anti-roulis actif avec des fonctions de pondération dépendant de paramètres variants, à l'aide du progiciel LPVTools. Les résultats de simulation dans les domaines fréquentiel et temporel, ainsi que la validation avec le logiciel de simulation TruckSim, montrent que les systèmes de barres anti-roulis actifs sont une solution réaliste et efficace qui améliore considérablement la stabilité en roulis des poids lourds par rapport aux systèmes de barres anti-roulis passifs. / Vehicle rollover is a very serious problem for the safety of heavy vehicles. Most modern heavy vehicles are equipped with passive anti-roll bars, however they may be not sufficient to overcome critical situations. This thesis focuses on the active anti-roll bar system, which is the most common method used to improve roll stability of heavy vehicles.The thesis research work is divided into three main parts. In the first part, an integrated model is proposed with four electronic servo-valve hydraulic actuators mounted in a linear yaw-roll model of a single unit heavy vehicle. In the second part, the active anti-roll bar system uses two control approaches in the LTI framework: LQR, Hinfty. In the third part, the grid-based LPV approach is used to synthesize the Hinfty/LPV active anti-roll bar controller with parameter dependant weighting functions, by using LPVTools.The simulation results, in the frequency and time domains, as well as the validation by using the TruckSim simulation software, show that the active anti-roll bar control is a realistic and efficient solution which drastically improves roll stability of a single unit heavy vehicle, compared to the passive anti-roll bar.

Autonomous driving is one of the megatrends in today’s automotive industry. Passengers are expected to do more non-driving tasks in an autonomous driving vehicle. Therefore, the comfort of the vehicle has become a more important factor for the passengers. This thesis investigates the possibility of increasing comfort through an integrated active chassis control strategy. First, this thesis has defined comfort in objective ways. Then, the objective comfort evaluation variables are used for comfort evaluation of the vehicle in different scenarios. The improvement in comfort is evaluated for four active chassis systems, including active suspension, active anti-roll bar, active rear-wheel steering and torque vectoring systems. Since more than one active chassis system can affect vehicle body motion in one direction, those four active chassis systems should be controlled in an integrated way. The model predictive control (MPC) is used because it can control a multi-input multi-output system in an optimized way. Two MPC controllers have been developed in this thesis to control multiple active chassis systems for comfort improvement. The original MPC controller is a linear MPC controller that uses a time-invariant state-space vehicle model. The adaptive MPC controller is a linear MPC controller that uses a time-variant state-space vehicle model. These two controllers are tested in the simulation software CarMaker with various scenarios, such as slalom, double lane-change, and bumps that are both symmetrical and shifted unsymmetrical. Finally, the simulation results are evaluated with objective comfort evaluation methods to assess the controller performances in comfort improvement. In conclusion, the model predictive control can be a feasible way to improve comfort with multiple active chassis systems. The simulation results show that the two MPC controllers can reduce the objective comfort evaluation variables. The discussions of the design process and simulation results point out future works that need to be done before this project becomes a product of real vehicles. / Autonom körning är en av megatrenderna i dagens bilindustri. Passagerare förväntas utföra fler icke-körrelaterade uppgifter i ett autonomt fordon. Därför har fordonets komfort blivit en allt viktigare faktor för passagerarna. Denna avhandling undersöker möjligheten att öka komforten genom en integrerad aktiv chassikontrollstrategi. Som utgångspunkt har denna avhandling definierat komfort på objektiva sätt. Sedan används de objektiva komfortvärderingsvariablerna för komfortutvärdering av fordonet i olika scenarier. Förbättringen av komfort utvärderas för fyra aktiva chassisystem, inkluderande aktiv fjädring, aktiv krängningshämmare, aktiv bakhjulsstyrning och drivmomentvektorisering. Eftersom mer än ett aktivt chassisystem kan påverka fordonets rörelse i en riktning, bör dessa fyra aktiva chassisystem styras på ett integrerat sätt. Modellprediktiv reglering (MPC) används eftersom den kan styra ett multi-input multi-output system på ett optimerat sätt. Två MPC-reglersystem har utvecklats för att styra flera aktiva chassisystem för komfortförbättring. Den ursprungliga MPC-reglerenheten är en linjär MPC-regulator som använder en tidsinvariant fordonsmodell. Den adaptiva MPC-reglerenheten är en linjär MPC-regulator som använder en tidsvariant fordonsmodell. Dessa två reglersystem testas i simuleringsprogramvaran CarMaker i olika scenarier, till exempel slalom, dubbelt körfältsbyte och väg-gupp som är både symmetriska och osymmetriska. Slutligen utvärderas simuleringsresultaten med objektiva komfortutvärderingsmetoder för att bedöma reglersystemens komfortförbättring. Sammanfattningsvis kan modellprediktiv reglering vara ett genomförbart sätt att förbättra komforten med flera aktiva chassisystem. Simuleringsresultaten visar att de två MPC-regulatorerna kan reducera de objektiva komfortutvärderingsvariablerna. Diskussionerna om designprocessen och simuleringsresultaten tar upp framtida arbeten som behöver göras innan detta projekt kan förverkligas i riktiga fordon.