Stabilizing vehicle lateral dynamics with considerations of parameter uncertainties and control saturation through robust yaw control

This paper presents a robust yaw-moment controller design for improving vehicle handling and stability with considerations of parameter uncertainties and control saturation. The parameter uncertainties dealt with are the changes of vehicle mass and moment of inertia about the yaw axis and the variations of cornering stiffnesses. The control saturation considered is due to the physical limitations of actuators and tires. Both polytopic and norm-bounded approaches are used to describe parameter uncertainties, and a norm-bounded approach is applied to handle the saturation nonlinearity. The conditions for designing such a controller are derived as linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). A nonlinear vehicle model is utilized to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The simulation results show that the designed controller can improve vehicle handling and stability, regardless of the changes in vehicle mass and moment of inertia and the variations of road surfaces and saturation limitations.