Cruise control of a heavy duty truck on open road the benchmark problem

Improvements in transportation of goods in an efficient way is still a challenge for the society. Automobile industry is showing interest in the development of a Cruise Control System of a long haulage heavy duty truck on an open road. The control of Diesel engine is within itself a challenging task because of its highly nonlinear behavior. The complexity further increases due to the addition of transmission and chassis of the vehicle. A combined control scheme is proposed against the control of a heavy duty truck which includes the engine, drive line and chassis on a driving mission of almost 120km distance while fulfilling the demands on legislative speed, emissions and engine protections. A novel robust sliding mode controller is presented to control the engine speed while producing maximum torque whereas PI controller is responsible for the speed control of the vehicle. Actual road slope is an additional complexity for meeting desired control objectives. Simulation results showed robustness of the proposed controller throughout the driving mission.