Attitude Motion Control of a Half car Model with Tracking Controller Using Aerodynamic Surfaces

Ride comfort and the road holding capability of the vehicles are two major conflicting problems in-vehicle system dynamics and control. In this work, the effectiveness of an aerodynamic control system is investigated to overcome the tradeoff between ride comfort and road holding to enhance vehicle handling capability. A preview optimal control strategy comprised of feedback and a feedforward control strategy is used to track the ideal roll motion during cornering. The feedback control deals with tracking error while the purpose of the feedforward control is to deal with the future circular or a lane change maneuvers. The proposed control strategy helps to eliminate the effect of the lateral forces acting on the vehicle body in order to track the ideal roll motion. The simulation results show that the proposed control strategy accurately track the desired roll angle and enhance the ride comfort and vehicle handling capability.