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The aim of this work is to define the core of a stability control, called Active Vehicle System, for a hybrid Formula SAE car that will compete in the next season in the upcoming Alternative Energies (Class 1A) class. The vehicle on which the control system will act is equipped with two electric motors on the front axle and an internal combustion engine connected to the rear axle by the way of a semi-active differential. The layout of the car under consideration has been defined with the purpose of getting the most effectiveness by the Active Vehicle System, whose role is to define a yaw torque to be applied to the vehicle in order to correct its behavior during each maneuver. The results of the Upper Controller will be actuated by two Lower Controllers, one dedicated to the electric motors and one to the semi-active differential. On such controlled vehicle some testing maneuvers have been performed, in order to check its functionality.

Current ADAS systems can improve vehicle safety directly influencing its dynamics, reducing the impact of human error while driving. These functionalities have a high impact on the complexity of each unit installed on the car, potentially increasing the development time. In this work, a Hardware in the Loop testing bench and methodology for Autonomous Emergency Braking system is presented, aiming to enable a faster system development process. A commercial production brake by wire unit has been installed on a real-time driving simulator. The AEB functionality of the unit is activable in real-time during the simulation, by the means of a customizable control strategy. Two different AEB controllers have been implemented: the first one reproduces the unit stock functionality, while the second computes the requested deceleration using a PID control strategy.

In a Formula SAE car, as for almost all racecars, suppressing or limiting the action of the differential mechanism is the technique mostly adopted to improve the traction exiting the high lateral acceleration corners. The common Limited Slip Differentials (LSDs) unbalance the traction torque distribution, generating as a secondary effect a yaw torque on the vehicle. If this feature is electronically controlled, these devices can be used to manage the attitude of the car. The yaw torque introduced by an electronically controlled LSD (which can also be called SAD, “Semi-Active Differential”) could suddenly change from oversteering (i.e. pro-yaw) to understeering (i.e. anti-yaw), depending on the driving conditions. Therefore, controlling the vehicle attitude with a SAD could be challenging, and its effectiveness could be low if compared with the common torque vectoring systems, which act on the brake system of the car.