Optimal Control of the Tractor-Semitrailer Truck

This paper is concerned with the braking performance and the handling behavior of the tractor-semitrailer truck under optimal braking. Optimal control theory is used in order to deal with the problem and a combination of the steepest descent method and the Davidon Fletcher Powell method is used to solve it numerically. Results for some chosen braking maneuvers are obtained for a nonlinear truck model which has 14 degrees of freedom. These results show that, for the chosen maneuvers an idealized anti-skid braking is close to being optimal in the sense defined in this paper. Implementation of an idealized anti-skid braking on the tractor-semitrailer truck, however, may be not desirable.