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Tire forces and moments play an important role in vehicle dynamics and safety. X-by-wire chassis components including active suspension, electronic powered steering, by-wire braking, etc can take the tire forces as inputs to improve vehicle’s dynamic performance. In order to measure the accurate dynamic wheel load, most of the researches focused on the kinematic parameters such as body longitudinal and lateral acceleration, load transfer and etc. In this paper, the authors focus on the suspension system, avoiding the dependence on accurate mass and aerodynamics model of the whole vehicle. The geometry of the suspension is equated by the spatial parallel mechanism model (RSSR model), which improves the calculation speed while ensuring the accuracy. A suspension force observer is created, which contains parameters including spring damper compression length, push rod force, knuckle accelerations, etc., combing the kinematic and dynamic characteristic of the vehicle.

With the development of brake-by-wire technology, electro-hydraulic composite braking technology came into being. This technology distributes the total braking force demand into motor regenerative braking force and hydraulic braking force, and can achieve a high energy recovery rate. The existing composite braking control belongs to single-channel control, i.e., the four wheel braking pressures are always the same, so the hydraulic braking force distribution relationship of the front and rear wheels does not change. For single-axle-driven electric vehicles, the additional regenerative braking force on the driven wheels will destroy the original braking force distribution relationship, resulting in reduced braking efficiency of the driven wheels, which are much easier to lock under poor road adhesion conditions.

To overcome the shortcoming that vehicles with multiple steering modes need to switch steering modes at parking or very low speeds, a dynamic switch method of steering modes based on MOEA/D (Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Decomposition) was proposed for 4WID-4WIS (Four Wheel Independent Drive-Four Wheel Independent Steering) electric vehicle, considering the smoothness of dynamic switch, the lateral stability of the vehicle and the energy economy of tires. First of all, the vehicle model of 4WID-4WIS was established, and steering modes were introduced and analyzed. Secondly, the conditions for the dynamic switch of steering modes were designed with the goal of stability and safety. According to different constraints, the control strategy was formulated to obtain the target angle of the active wheels. Then aiming at the smoothness of the dynamic switch, the active wheel angle trajectory was constructed based on the B-spline theory.

Aiming at the problems of ineffective collision avoidance and vehicle instability in the process of vehicle emergency braking in road conditions with low adhesion and sudden change in adhesion coefficient, a stability-coordinated emergency braking and collision avoidance control system SEBCACS) is proposed. First, according to the motion of the ego vehicle and the target vehicle as well as the road adhesion conditions, a collision time model is proposed for evaluating the vehicle collision risk, and the expected deceleration required to avoid the collision is calculated. Then, the MPC method is used to calculate the yaw moment generated by the four-wheel braking force required to maintain vehicle stability according to the actual and reference yaw rate and side slip angle deviation. Then it is decided whether to implement additional yaw moment control according to the body stability evaluation results.

A tractor-trailer vehicle (TTV) consists of an actuated tractor attached with several full trailers. Because of its nonlinear and noncompleted constraints, it is a challenging task to avoid collisions for path planner. In this paper, we propose an efficient method to plan an optimal trajectory for TTV to reach the destination without any collision. To deal with the complicated constraints, the trajectory planning problem is formulated as an optimal control problem uniformly, which can be solved by the interior point method. A novel incremental optimization solving algorithm (IOSA) is proposed to accelerate the optimization process, which makes the number of trailers and the size of obstacles increase asynchronously. Simulation experiments are carried out in two scenarios with static obstacles. Compared with other methods, the results show that the planning method with IOSA outperforms in the efficiency.

Since situational awareness is crucial for autonomous driving in urban environments, multi-target tracking has become an increasingly popular research topic during the last several years. For autonomous driving in urban environments, cars and pedestrians are the two main types of obstacles, and their motion characteristics are not the same. While in the current related multi-target tracking research, the same motion model (such as Constant Velocity model [CV]) or motion model set (such as CV combined with Constant Acceleration model [CA]) is mostly used to track different types of obstacles simultaneously. Besides, in current research, regular motion models are mostly adopted to track pedestrians, such as CV, CA, and so on, the uncertainty in pedestrian motion is not well considered.

Tire cavity noise of pure electric vehicles is particularly prominent due to the absence of engine noise, which are usually eliminated by adding Helmholtz resonators with arbitrary transversal section to the wheel rims. This paper provides theoretical basis for accurately predicting and effectively improving acoustic performance of wheel resonators. A hybrid finite element method is developed to extract the transversal wavenumbers and eigenvectors, and the mode-matching scheme is employed to determine the transmission loss of the Helmholtz resonator. Based on the accuracy validation of this method, the matching design of the wheel resonators and the optimization method of tire cavity noise are studied. The identification method of the tire cavity resonance frequency is developed through the acoustic modal test. A scientific transmission loss target curve and fitness function are defined according to the noise characteristics.

A composite steering control strategy, which combines four-wheel steering (4WS) and differential steering, is proposed in this paper, to optimize steering maneuverability in the conditions where the vehicle speed is below 15 Km/h, mainly for U-turning and parking conditions. A dynamic model is developed for the steering system and the tire system. Taking different steering wheel inputs into consideration, a 4WS control strategy proportional to the front wheel steering angle is quoted to improve the steering maneuverability in the low speed conditions and guarantee the manipulability by controlling the side slip of the vehicle. Based on the 4WS system, this paper explores the possibility of further improving the low-speed maneuverability of the vehicle through differential steering. And the differential steering control strategy is developed, including four hub-motor output modes. A composite steering controller is designed based on the 4WS-4WD electric vehicle platform.

Cut-in scenarios are common and of potential risk in China but Advanced Driver Assistant System (ADAS) doesn’t work well under such scenarios. In order to improve the acceptance of ADAS, its reactions to Cut-in scenarios should meet driver’s driving habits and expectancy. Brake is considered as an express of risk and brake tendency in normal Cut-in situations needs more investigation. Under critical Cut-in scenarios, driver tends to brake hard to eliminate collision risk when cutting in vehicle right crossing lane. However, under less critical Cut-in scenarios, namely normal Cut-in scenarios, driver brakes in some cases and takes no brake maneuver in others. The time when driver initiated to brake was defined as key time. If driver had no brake maneuver, the time when cutting-in vehicle right crossed lane was defined as key time. This paper focuses on driver’s brake tendency at key time under normal Cut-in situations.

Velocity is one of the most important inputs of active safety systems such as ABS, TCS, ESC, ACC, AEB et al. In a distributed drive electric vehicle equipped with four in-wheel motors, velocity is hard to obtain due to all-wheel drive, especially in wheel slipping conditions. This paper focus on longitudinal velocity estimation of the distributed drive electric vehicle. Firstly, a basic longitudinal velocity estimation method is built based on a typical Kalman filter, where four wheel speeds obtained by wheel speed sensors constitute an observation variable and the longitudinal acceleration measured by an inertia moment unit is chosen as input variable. In simulations, the typical Kalman filter show good results when no wheel slips; when one or more wheels slip, the typical Kalman filter with constant covariance matrices does not work well. Therefore, a gain matrix adjusting Kalman filter which can detect the wheel slip and cope with that is proposed.

This paper presents several pressure estimation algorithms (PEAs) for a decoupled electro-hydraulic brake system (EHB), which is driven by an electric motor + reduction gear. Most of the pressure control solutions are based on standard pressure-based feedback control, requiring a pressure signal. Although the pressure sensor can produce the pressure feedback signal, it will increase cost and enlarge installation space. The rotation angle of electric motor is available by the built-in sensor, so the pressure can be estimated by using the rotation angle. Considering the typical nonlinearities (i.e. friction, pressure-position relationship) and uncertainties (i.e. disturbance caused by friction model), the estimation-oriented model is established. The LuGre model is selected to describe the friction, and the pressure-position relationship is fitted by a quadratic polynomial.

Electric wheel systems of in-wheel motor driven vehicles consist of the motor controller, in-wheel motor and tire-suspension assembly. The coupling between the electromagnetic excitation and elastic structure gives rise to electromechanical dynamic issues. As for the structural layout of the electric wheel system, the driving motor is directly connected to the wheel without torsion dampers or transmission in the driveline, thus making the electric wheel structure a weak damping system. Moreover, the driving torque of electric wheel can change rapidly in various conditions of vehicle. As a result, the transient vibration problem becomes one of the key electromechanical dynamic issues in the electric wheel system. To investigate this problem, the electromechanical coupling model of the electric wheel system is established first. Then the transient responses of the electric wheel under abrupt changes of the driving torque are simulated.

Wheel Aerodynamics is an important part of vehicle aerodynamics. The wheels can notably influence the total aerodynamic drag, lift and ventilation drag of vehicles. In order to simulate the real on-road condition of driving cars, the moving ground and wheel rotation is of major importance in CFD. However, the wheel rotation condition is difficult to be represented exactly, so this is still a critical topic which needs to be worked on. In this paper, a study, which focuses on two types of cars: a fastback sedan and a notchback DrivAer, is conducted. Comparing three different wheel rotating simulation methods: steady Moving wall, MRF and unsteady Sliding Mesh, the effects of different methods for the numerical simulation of vehicle aerodynamics are revealed. Discrepancies of aerodynamic forces between the methods are discussed as well as the flow field, and the simulation results are also compared with published experimental data for validation.

Steering of skid-steered vehicles without steering mechanism is realized by differential drive/brake torque generated from in-wheel motors at left and right sides. Compared to traditional Ackerman-steered vehicles, skid-steered vehicles consume much more energy while steering due to greater steering resistance. Torque allocation is critical to the distributed drive skid-steered vehicles, since it influences not only steering performance, but also energy efficiency. In this paper, the dynamic characteristics of six-wheeled skid-steered vehicles were analyzed, and a 2-DOF vehicle model was established, which is important for both motion tracking control and torque allocation. Furthermore, a hierarchical controller was proposed. Considering tire force characteristics and tire slip, the upper layer calculates the generalized force and desired yaw moment based on anti-windup PI (proportion-integral) control method.

Two control strategies, safety preferred control and master cylinder oscillation control, were designed for anti-lock braking on a novel integrated-electro-hydraulic braking system (I-EHB) which has only four solenoid valves in its innovative hydraulic control unit (HCU) instead of eight in a traditional one. The main idea of safety preferred control is to reduce the hydraulic pressure provided by the motor in the master cylinder whenever a wheel tends to be locking even if some of the other wheels may need more braking torque. In contrast, regarding master cylinder oscillation control, a sinusoidal signal is given to the motor making the hydraulic pressure in the master cylinder oscillate in certain frequency and amplitude. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the two control strategies mentioned above and to evaluate them.

The radar-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) like autonomous emergency braking (AEB) and forward collision warning (FCW) can reduce accidents, so as to make vehicles, drivers and pedestrians safer. For active safety, automotive millimeter-wave radar is an indispensable role in the automotive environmental sensing system since it can work effectively regardless of the bad weather while the camera fails. One crucial task of the automotive radar is to detect and distinguish some objects close to each other precisely with the increasingly complex of the road condition. Nowadays almost all the automotive radar products work in bidimensional area where just the range and azimuth can be measured. However, sometimes in their field of view it is not easy for them to differentiate some objects, like the car, the manhole covers and the guide board, when they align with each other in vertical direction.

In this paper, a novel method is proposed to establish the vehicle yaw stability criterion based on the sideslip angle-yaw rate (β-r) phase plane method. First, nonlinear two degrees of freedom vehicle analysis model is established by adopting the Magic Formula of nonlinear tire model. Then, according to the model in the Matlab/Simulink environment, the β-r phase plane is gained. Emphatically, the effects of different driving conditions (front wheels steering angle, road adhesion coefficient and speed) on the stability boundaries of the phase plane are analyzed. Through a large number of simulation analysis, results show that there are two types of phase plane: curve stability region and diamond stability region, and the judgment method of the vehicle stability domain type under different driving conditions is solved.

A driver steering model for emergency lane change based on the China naturalistic driving data is proposed in this paper. The steering characteristic of three phases is analyzed. Using the steering primitive fitting by Gaussian function, the steering behaviors in collision avoidance and lateral movement phases can be described, and the stabilization steering principle of yaw rate null is found. Based on the steering characteristic, the near and far aim point used in steering phases is analyzed. Using the near and far aim point correction model, a driver steering model for emergency lane change is established. The research results show that the driver emergency steering model proposed in this paper performs well when explaining realistic steering behavior, and this model can be used in developing the ADAS system.

As is known to all, the structure of the chassis has been greatly simplified as the application of in-wheel motor in electric vehicle (EV) and distributed control is allowed. The micro EV can alleviate traffic jams, reduce the demand for motor and battery capacity due to its small size and light weight and accordingly solve the problem that in-wheel motor is limited by inner space of the wheel hub. As a result, this type of micro EV is easier to be recognized by the market. In the micro EV above, two seats are side by side and the battery is placed in the middle of the chassis. Besides, in-wheel motors are mounted on the rear axle and only front axle retains traditional hydraulic braking system. Based on this driving/braking system, distribution of braking torque, system reliability and braking intensity is analyzed in this paper.

Based on the emergency lane change cases extracted from the China naturalistic driving data, the driving steering behavior divides into three phases: collision avoidance, lateral movement and steering stabilization. Using the steering primitive fitting by Gaussian function, the distribution of the duration time, the relationship between steering wheel rate and deflection were analyzed in three phases. It is shown that the steering behavior essentially is composed of steering primitives during the emergency lane-change. However, the combination of the steering primitives is different according to the specific steering constraints in three phases. In the collision avoidance phase, a single steering primitive with high peak is used for the fast steering; in the lateral movement and stabilization phase, a combination of two or even more steering primitives is built to a more accurate steering.