A novel adaptive sliding mode control approach for electric vehicle direct yaw-moment control

Direct yaw-moment control systems have been proven effective in enhancing vehicle stability and handling. The existing direct yaw-moment control designs commonly involve computation of tire side-slip angles, which is susceptible to measurement and estimation errors. The fixed control gain of the conventional sliding mode direct yaw-moment control design cannot adapt to variations and uncertainties in vehicle parameters. As a result, its robustness against parametric variations and uncertainties is limited. To improve the control performance, a novel adaptive sliding mode direct yaw-moment control approach is proposed in this article for electric vehicles with independent motors. The proposed method utilizes a varying control gain to adapt to the variations of front and rear tire side-slip angles. Comparative simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional method with inaccurate tire side-slip angle feedback. With the proposed direct yaw-moment control system on-board, the adverse effects of inaccuracies on tire side-slip angles are suppressed and the vehicle’s robustness against parametric variations and uncertainties is enhanced.