A closed-loop dynamic simulation-based design method for articulated heavy vehicles with active trailer steering systems, Vehicle System Dynamics: International Journal of Vehicle Mechanics and Mobility, 50:5, 675-697, This paper presents a closed-loop dynamic simulation-based design method for articulated heavy vehicles (AHVs) with active trailer steering (ATS) systems. AHVs have poor manoeuvrability at low speeds and exhibit low lateral stability at high speeds. From the design point of view, there exists a trade-off relationship between AHVs' manoeuvrability and stability. For example, fewer articulation points and longer wheelbases will improve high-speed lateral stability, but they will degrade low-speed manoeuvrability. To tackle this conflicting design problem, a systematic method is proposed for the design of AHVs with ATS systems. In order to evaluate vehicle performance measures under a welldefined testing manoeuvre, a driver model is introduced and it 'drivers' the vehicle model to follow a prescribed route at a given speed. Considering the interactions between the mechanical trailer and the ATS system, the proposed design method simultaneously optimises the active design variables of the controllers and passive design variables of the trailer in a single design loop (SDL). Through the design optimisation of an ATS system for an AHV with a truck and a drawbar trailer combination, this SDL method is compared against a published two design loop method. The benchmark investigation shows that the former can determine better trade-off design solutions than those derived by the latter. This SDL method provides an effective approach to automatically implement the design synthesis of AHVs with ATS systems.

This paper presents the design for an active trailer-steering system of multi-trailer articulated heavy vehicles using driver-software-in-the-loop real-time simulations. A linear yaw-plane multi-trailer articulated heavy-vehicle model is generated to derive an optimal active trailer-steering controller. Then, the controller is reconstructed in LabVIEW and integrated with a vehicle model for a tractor– double-trailer combination developed in TruckSim. The driver-software-in-the-loop real-time simulations are conducted on a vehicle simulator. The driver-software-in-the-loop real-time simulations indicate that the active trailer-steering controller can effectively improve the low-speed manoeuvrability and high-speed stability of the multi-trailer articulated heavy vehicle when testing using a low-speed 360° roundabout path-following manoeuvre and a high-speed single-lane-change manoeuvre respectively. The investigation based on the driver-software-in-the-loop real-time simulations paves the way to future development of electronic control units for the active trailer-steering system using driver-hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulations.

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