Robust Control for the Electrohydraulic Steering System of a Four-Wheel Vehicle

To shorten the steer diameter and to improve the maneuverability flexibility of a construction vehicle, four wheels’ steering system is presented. This steering system consists of mechanical-electrical-hydraulic assemblies. Its diagram and principle are depicted in detail. Then the mathematical models are derived step by step, including the whole vehicle model and the hydraulic route model. Considering the nonlinear and time-varying uncertainty of the steering system, robust controller is put forward to guarantee both the system performance and the robust stability. The norm of the sensitive function from the parameter perturbation of the hydraulic system to the yaw velocity of the vehicle is taken as the evaluating index of the robustness and the norm of the transfer function from the external disturbance to the steering angle of the wheel as the index of linear quadratic Gaussian. The experimental results showed that the proposed scheme was superior to classical PID controller and can guarantee both the control performance and the robustness of the steering system.