Integrated Vehicle Dynamics Control through Coordinating Electronic Stability Program and Active Suspension System

This paper investigates integrated vehicle dynamics control through coordinating active suspension system (ASS) and electronic stability program (ESP) in order to improve the overall vehicle performance including handling, stability, and comfort. A two-layer hierarchical control architecture is proposed to integrated control of the two chassis control systems. The upper layer controller is designed to coordinate the interactions between the ASS and the ESP. While in the lower layer, the two controllers including the ASS and the ESP, are developed independently to achieve their local control objectives. Simulation investigation is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed hierarchical control system. Results show that the proposed hierarchical control system is able to improve the multiple performance indices of the vehicle including both the ride comfort and the lateral stability, compared to the non-integrated control system.