Yaw control of a 3-Axle single-trailer truck using steerable wheel optimised with gravitational search algorithm

A single-trailer truck plays an important roles of transportation in the economics of modern societies. Despite several advantages in transportation, this vehicle is often involved in a road accident such as skidding, jack-knifing, trailer oscillation, and others led by the unwanted yaw rate on this vehicle while manoeuvring. The stability of the vehicle has been the most concern as it can provide unwanted response properties while traveling at high speeds. This study proposed the development of the yaw rejection control for single-trailer truck using a steerable wheel located at the middle axles. This controller is implemented in order to reduce yaw disturbance which is lateral stability on single-trailer truck vehicles while manoeuvring. The yaw rejection control system was proposed using a PID controller and the controller parameters were optimized using Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) to obtain the optimal responses. Then, the result of the active model responses is compared with the result of the passive model response in terms of magnitude and percentage of difference using the RMS method. The proposed yaw rejection controller shows the highest reduction of 34.66% RMS reduction for lateral acceleration response and 22.92% RMS reduction for yaw rate response. Lastly, the yaw rejection controller was validated on a small scale of single-trailer truck vehicle model and steerable wheel actuator through the Hardware-in-the-loop simulation. The results showed that the yaw rejection controller successfully generated realistic steering wheel actions for the steerable wheel in stabilising yaw moment of the truck vehicle while manoeuvring