Design of Articulated Heavy Vehicles with Active Safety Systems

This paper presents a parallel design optimization method for articulated heavy vehicles (AHVs) with active safety systems (ASSs). For the design of AHVs, a challenge is to deal with the trade-off between high-speed stability and low-speed maneuverability. Genetic algorithms (GAs) have been applied to the design of AHVs, but the computation efficiency is low. To address the problem, a parallel computing technique with a master-slave system is proposed. Active trailer steering (ATS), differential braking (DB) and anti-roll (AR) sub-systems are combined in an integrated ASS. Considering the interaction between the mechanical trailer and ASS, the proposed method simultaneously optimizes the active design variables of the controllers and passive design variables of the trailers using the master-slave computing system. The proposed method provides an effective approach to the design synthesis of AHVs with ASSs using a parallel computation technique