Comparison among Active Front, Front Independent, 4-Wheel and 4-Wheel Independent Steering Systems for Vehicle Stability Control

For the last four decades, several steering systems for vehicles such as active front steering (AFS), front wheel independent steering (FWIS), 4-wheel steering (4WS) and 4-wheel independent steering (4WIS) have been proposed and developed. However, there have been few approaches for comparison among these steering systems with respect to yaw rate tracking or path tracking performance. This paper presents comparison among AFS, FWIS, 4WS and 4WIS in terms of vehicle stability control. In view of vehicle stability control, these systems are used as an actuator for generation of yaw moment. Direct yaw moment control is adopted to calculate a control yaw moment. Distribution from the control yaw moment into tire forces is achieved by a control allocation method. From the calculated tire forces, the steering angles of FWIS, 4WS and 4WIS are determined with a lateral tire force model. To check the performance of these actuators, simulation is conducted on vehicle simulation packages, CarSim. From the simulation, the advantages of FWIS and 4WIS are revealed over AFS and 4WS.