Sliding Mode Roll Control of Active Suspension Electric Vehicles

Abstract: Vehicle roll control has been a well studied problem. One of the ubiquitous methods to mitigate vehicle rollover in the automobile industry is via a mechanical anti-roll bar. However with the advent of electric vehicles, rollover mitigation can be pursued using electric actuation. In this work, we study a roll control algorithm using sliding mode control for active suspension vehicles, where the actuation for the roll control signal is generated by electric motors independently at the four corners of the vehicle. This technology precludes the need for any mechanical actuation which is often slower as well as any anti-roll bar to mitigate vehicle rollover situations. We provide an implementation of the proposed algorithm and conduct numerical experiments to validate the functionality and effectiveness. Specifically, we perform Slalom and J-turn maneuvering tests on an active suspension electric vehicle with sliding model roll control and it is shown to mitigate rollover by atleast 50% compared to passive suspension vehicles, while simultaneously maintaining rider comfort.