Abstract: In order to enhance the active safety of tractor-semitrailer combination, an active pneumatic brake control system is built in this paper. A set of active pneumatic brake actuators, compatible with traditional pneumatic braking system, are designed with corresponding hardware system constructed. The pressure boost and relief models of the system and the on-off process model for solenoid valve are set up, and the model parameters are identified with particle swarm algorithm based on experimental data. On this basis, a model-based active pneumatic brake control strategy is established and verified by tests. The results show that the active pneumatic brake control system proposed for tractor-semitrailer combination can achieve accurate control of active pneumatic brake.

Key words: tractor-semitrailer combination, active pneumatic braking, modeling, control, parameter identification