Development of estimated disturbance rejection feedback for an armoured vehicle using active front wheel steering

An unwanted yaw motion occurred at the centre of gravity (CG) of the wheeled armoured vehicle caused by the impulse force generated during gun turret firing. The recoil force from the gun fire tends to create instability conditions for the armoured vehicle during firing condition and affects the dynamic performance of armoured vehicle in lateral direction. In this paper, an active safety system, active front wheel steering (AFWS) system using estimated disturbance rejection feedback (EDRF) embodiment is proposed to reject the unwanted yaw disturbance and stabilise the armoured vehicle. Besides, the proposed control strategy is also used to re-position the armoured vehicle back to its initial position. Therefore, a summation moment reference input is used to counter back the unwanted firing moment occurred due to gun firing impulse at CG of the armoured vehicle. The armoured vehicle is evaluated via simulation analysis in term of yaw rate, yaw angle, vehicle sideslip angle, lateral acceleration and lateral displacement. Significant improvements up to 75% have been achieved by using the proposed control strategy of AFWS system to reject the external disturbance due to the firing force.