Automatic stability control of three-wheeler vehicles – recent developments and concerns towards a sustainable technology

Abstract

Traffic congestion, pollution due to vehicular emissions and fuel energy crises are the major problems that have inspired research for the design of efficient and smaller vehicles as a regular mode of transport with a significantly lower carbon footprint. With an increased dependency on certain countries for fuel energy, electric mobility has been encouraged by policy makers so that national interests are not compromised. At the same time, enhanced standards of living have resulted in a demand for safer and comfortable transport. All of these factors have led to a need for a mode of transport that is efficient, compact, safe and comfortable. Electric three-wheelers are seen as one of the promising options that fits all of these requirements. Due to their high propensity to rollover during cornering, however, the use of three-wheeled vehicles (3Ws) is limited to low-speed applications for cheap transport. Recent developments in the field of rollover mitigation through active tilt control mechanisms indicate that the future mode of transport will be more exciting than the existing one. This paper is a review mainly focused on the recent technological developments in active-tilt-controlled three-wheeled vehicles. This paper gives a detailed review of the methodologies chosen, control strategies adopted, types of vehicle chosen for test/simulation, mathematical models applied, key findings and future work proposed to address the dynamics-related issues of tilting 3Ws.

Development and Experimental Implementation of Active Tilt Control System Using a Servo Motor Actuator for Narrow Tilting Electric Vehicle

“…In [20], a review is given on tilt control systems. In [21], critical states of the vehicle such as normal driving, one rear wheel temporarily lifted off the ground and totally falling down of the vehicle were analysed.…”

A novel nonlinear controller for enhancement of the transient dynamics performance of a three-wheeled vehicle during different conditions

“…Azim et al 15 developed a roll control system through an active steering system to increase the lateral stability of the three-wheeled vehicle. According to many researches, the rollover phenomenon is one of the most severe instability modes of a three-wheeled vehicle [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Furthermore, the yaw instability is the most important another mode that must be considered to improve the vehicle's handling. [27][28][29][30][31] Most researches have focused on the roll stability increment of the vehicles and the maneuverability improvement has been considered by a few of them.…”

Application of Light Metal Alloy EN AW 6063 to Vehicle Frame Construction with an Innovated Steering Mechanism

“…[32,33]. Such equipment is relatively demanding to control, as it requires the application of actuators [34][35][36], which causes an increase in the complexity of the whole system, energy consumption for its drive, and decreases the reliability. Electric drive-trains use an electromotor with permanent magnets [37], because this type of the drive-train is widespread in electric vehicles.…”