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Performance testing and evaluation always plays an important role in the developmental process of a vehicle, which also applies to autonomous vehicles. The complex nature of an autonomous vehicle from architecture to functionality demands even more quality-and-quantity controlled testing and evaluation than ever before. Most of the existing testing methodologies are task-or-scenario based and can only support single or partial functional testing. These approaches may be helpful at the initial stage of autonomous vehicle development. However, as the integrated autonomous system gets mature, these approaches fall short of supporting comprehensive performance evaluation. This paper proposes a novel hierarchical and systematic testing and evaluation approach to bridge the above-mentioned gap.

The accuracy of tire forces directly affects the vehicle dynamics model precision and determines the ability of the model to develop the simulation platform or design the control strategy. In the high slip angle, due to the complex interactions at tire-road interfaces, the forces generated by the tires are high nonlinearity and uncertainty, which pose issues in calculating tire force accurately. This paper presents a hybrid physical and data-driven tire force calculation framework, which can satisfy the high nonlinearity and uncertainty condition, improve the model accuracy and effectively leverage prior knowledge of physical laws. The parameter identification for the physical tire model and the data-based compensation for the unknown errors between the physical tire model and actual tire force data are contained in this framework. First, the parameters in the selected combined-slip Burckhardt tire model are identified by the nonlinear least square method with tire test data.

A high-precision steady state tire model is critical in the tire and vehicle matching research. For the moment, the popular Magic Formula model is an empirical model, which requires the pure and combined test data to identify the model parameters. Although MTS Flat-trac is an efficient tire test rig, the long test period and high test cost of a complete tire model tests for handling are yet to be solved. Therefore, it is necessary to explore a high accuracy method for predicting tire complex mechanical properties with as few test data as possible. In this study, a method for predicting tire combined slip characteristics from pure cornering and pure longitudinal test data has been investigated, and verified by comparing with the test data. Firstly, the prediction theory of UniTire model is introduced, and the formula for predicting combined slip characteristics based on constant friction coefficient is derived.

Autonomous driving technology is more and more important nowadays, it has been changing the living style of our society. As for autonomous driving planning and control, vehicle dynamics has strong nonlinearity and uncertainty, so vehicle dynamics and control is one of the most challenging parts. At present, many kinds of specific vehicle dynamics models have been proposed, this review attempts to give an overview of the state of the art of vehicle dynamics models for autonomous driving. Firstly, this review starts from the simple geometric model, vehicle kinematics model, dynamic bicycle model, double-track vehicle model and multi degree of freedom (DOF) dynamics model, and discusses the specific use of these classical models for autonomous driving state estimation, trajectory prediction, motion planning, motion control and so on.

The Electronic Mechanical Braking (EMB) system, which offers advantages such as no liquid medium and complete decoupling, can meet the high-quality active braking and high-intensity regenerative braking demands proposed by intelligent vehicles and is considered one of the ideal platforms for future chassis. However, traditional control strategies with fixed clamping force tracking parameters struggle to maintain high-quality braking performance of EMB under variable braking requests, and the nonlinear friction between mechanical components also affects the accuracy of clamping force control. Therefore, this paper presents an adaptive clamping force control strategy for the EMB system, taking into account the resistance of nonlinear friction. First, an EMB model is established as the simulation and control object, which includes the motor model, transmission model, torque balance model, stiffness model, and friction model.

The vehicle pull problem is very important to driving safety. Major factors that may cause the pull problem related to tire include variations of geometric dimension (e.g. RPK) and stiffness (e.g. cornering stiffness, aligning stiffness), plysteer and conicity. In previous research, the influencing mechanism of these factors was well studied. But in fact, vehicle pull problem caused by tire is probabilistic. When we assemble four tires onto the car, there could be 384 different assembly arrangements. If there are significant differences among these four tires, there will also be significant differences in the influence of different tire assembly schemes on vehicle pull, which has not been systematically discussed in previous studies. If we want to evaluate the pull performance of all these arrangements by vehicle test, it will be a time consuming process which will take almost 24 working days, along with a high test expense.

This paper presents an integrated method for rapid modeling, simulation and virtual evaluation of the interface pressure between driver human body and seat. For simulation of the body-seat interaction and for calculation of the interface pressure, besides body dimensions and material characteristics an important aspect is the posture and position of the driver body with respect to seat. In addition, to ensure accommodation of the results to the target population usually several individuals are simulated, whose body anthropometries cover the scope of the whole population. The multivariate distribution of the body anthropometry and the sampling techniques are usually adopted to generate the individuals and to predict the detailed body dimensions. In biomechanical modeling of human body and seat, the correct element type, the rational settings of the contacts between different parts, the correct exertion of the loads to the calculation field, etc., are also crucial.

The performance parameters of torsional vibration damper, including stiffness and damping, have great influence on the torsional vibration of automobile driveline. At present, the research on torsional vibration damper mainly concentrates on the torsional stiffness, but rarely on the torsional damping characteristics. This paper systematically studied the effect of torsional stiffness and damping on torsional vibration of automobile driveline under uniform speed conditions, accelerated and decelerated conditions, idling conditions and resonance conditions. The requirements on stiffness and damping of various operating conditions were summarized. The effect and requirements researched were useful to performance match design of torsional vibration damper.

With the development of cellular communication technology and for the sake of reducing drag resistance, the multi-lane platoon technology will be more prosperous in the future. In this article, the cooperative vehicle platoon method on the public road is represented. The method’s architecture is mainly composed of the following parts: decision-making, path planning and control command generation. The decision-making uses the finite state machine to make decision and judgment on the cooperative lane change of vehicles, and starts to execute the lane change step when the lane change requirements are met. In terms of path planning, with the goal of ensuring comfort, the continuity of the vehicle state and no collision between vehicles, a fifth-order polynomial is used to fit every vehicle trajectory. In terms of control command generation module, a model predictive control algorithm is used to solve the multi-vehicle centralized optimization control problem.

With the rapid development of intelligent driving technology, there has been a growing interest in the driving comfort of automated vehicles. As vehicles become more automated, the role of the driver shifts from actively engaging in driving tasks to that of a passenger. Consequently, the study of the passenger experience in automated driving vehicles has emerged as a significant research area. In order to examine the impact of automatic driving on passengers' riding experience in vehicle platooning scenarios, this study conducted real vehicle experiments involving six participants. The study assessed the subjective perception scores, eye movement, and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals of passengers seated in the front passenger seat under various vehicle speeds, distances, and driving modes. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that vehicle speed has the most substantial influence on passenger perception.

In order to solve the coupling problems between braking safety, economical efficiency of braking and the comfort of drivers, a braking control strategy based on Electronically Controlled Braking System (EBS) and intelligent network technology under non-emergency braking conditions is proposed. The controller utilizes the intelligent network technology’s characteristics of the workshop communication to obtain the driving environment information of the current vehicle firstly, and then calculate the optimal braking deceleration of the vehicle based on optimal control method. The strategy will distribute the braking force according to the ideal braking force distribution condition based on the EBS according to the braking deceleration; the braking force will be converted to braking pressure according to brake characteristics. Computer co-simulations of the proposed strategy are performed, the strategy is verified under different initial speeds.

In the performance evaluating of Electronic Brake System, conventional test methods have some inconvenience in existence. For example, the fixing of pressure sensors and wheel speed sensors is restrained by the installation position, and the precision of measuring is prone to be affected by the environment conditions. Since Electronic Brake System is featured by CAN (Controller Area Network) communication, special testing instrument can be connected with CAN bus, monitoring signals transmitting on the bus. This paper outlines the results of the study performed to analyze the application of CAN communication in the way of performance evaluation of Electronic Braking System.

A vehicle’s NVH performance has a significant impact on the user experience of the driver and passengers. About one-third of the vehicle complaints are related to NVH performance. As the core component of the vehicle, the drivetrain’s NVH characteristics have a significant impact on vehicle comfort. How to reliably and stably reproduce the specific condition of the whole vehicle through the test method, and obtain the highly consistent objective data for analyzing and improving the NVH characteristics of the drivetrain is of great significance in engineering. For this purpose, China Automotive Technology Research Center Co., Ltd. (CATARC) designed and built a new type drivetrain NVH test facility, which consists of five dynamometers, and can carry horizontal/vertical, front/rear drive or four-wheel drive structures including powertrain, transmission, and rear axle, or even a whole vehicle.

In order to study the influence of body flexibility on the truck ride comfort, a 4 DOF half vibration model of truck based on the motion synthesis between rigid body and body flexibility is established using elastic beam theory of equal section with both free ends. At the same time, a corresponding 2 DOF rigid vibration model is also built. The frequency response functions of system and response variables of two models are derived based on front wheel. The power spectral densities and the root mean square values of body acceleration, dynamic deflections and relative dynamic loads are obtained. By comparing the simulation results of rigid-elastic model and rigid model, it shows that body flexibility has a great impact on truck ride comfort and it cannot be ignored.

Automobile cabin acoustical comfort is one of the main features that may attract customers to purchase a new car. The acoustic cavity mode of the car has an effect on the acoustical comfort. To identify the factors affecting computing accuracy of the acoustic mode, three different element type and six different element size acoustic finite element models of an automobile passenger compartment are developed and experimentally assessed. The three different element type models are meshed in three different ways, tetrahedral elements, hexahedral elements and node coupling tetrahedral and hexahedral elements (tetra-hexahedral elements). The six different element size models are meshed with hexahedral element varies from 50mm to 75mm. Modal analysis test of the passenger car is conducted using loudspeaker excitation to identify the compartment cavity modes.

The wireless inter-vehicle communication provide a manner to achieve multi-vehicle cooperative driving, and the platoon of automotive vehicle can significantly improve traffic efficiency and ensure traffic safety. Previous researches mostly focus on the state of the proceeding vehicle, and transmit information from self to the succeeding vehicle. Nevertheless, this structure possesses high requirements for controller design and shows poor effect in system stability. In this paper, the state of vehicles is not only related to the information of neighbor vehicles, while V2V communication transmit information over a wide range of area. To begin with, the node dynamic model of vehicle is described by linear integrator with inertia delay and the space control strategy is proposed with different topological communication structures as BF, LBF, PBF, etc.

The platooning of connected automated vehicles (CAV) possesses the significant potential of reducing energy consumption in the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). Moreover, with the rapid development of eco-driving technology, vehicle platooning can further enhance the fuel efficiency by optimizing the efficiency of the powertrain. Since road grade is a main factor that affects the energy consumption of a vehicle, the estimation of the road grade with high accuracy is the key factor for a connected vehicle platoon to optimize energy consumption using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. Commonly, the road grade is quantified by single consumer grade global positioning system (GPS) with the geodetic height data which is rough and in the meter-level, increasing the difficulty of precisely estimating the road grade.

In order to improve the mode switching performance of parallel hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and make better use of the dynamics of the vehicle, this paper proposes a three-stage control method for the start-up mode of start-up, speed synchronization, and clutch slip based on the response characteristics of actual vehicle components and the complex working conditions of the actual road. In the speed synchronization phase, a coordinated control method of “engine speed active following + continuously variable transmission (CVT) speed ratio motor speed limiting” is proposed. The real vehicle test results show that the engine starting-up coordinated control method can significantly accelerate the speed synchronization and shorten the starting-up mode duration during the rapid acceleration, so that the vehicle’s power performance can be well played and the ride comfort can be effectively guaranteed.

Semi-active suspension system (SASS) could enhance the ride comfort of the vehicle across different operating conditions through adjusting damping characteristics. However, current SASS are often calibrated based on engineering experience when selecting parameters for its controller, which complicates the achievement of optimal performance and leads to a decline in ride comfort for the vehicle being controlled. Linear quadratic constrained optimal control is a crucial tool for enhancing the performance of semi-active suspensions. It considers various performance objectives, such as ride comfort, handling stability, and driving safety. This study presents a control strategy for determining optimal damping force in SASS to enhance driving comfort. First, we analyze the working principle of the SASS and construct a seven-degree-of-freedom model.

In this paper, it was researched the degradation characteristics of catalytic performance of three kinds of DPFs (C1, C2 and C3, with precious metal concentrations being 15, 25 and 35 g/ft3 respectively) after diesel truck aging. It is found out that the crystallinity of three kinds of DPF samples (Used) in full vehicle aging was higher than that of fresh samples (Fresh) and aged samples (Aged) in the laboratory. Compared with Fresh samples, the concentration of Pt atom in precious metal on the surface of Aged and Used samples tends to decrease in most cases. Activities to CO and C3H8 of Aged and Used samples of three kinds of DPFs had all been degraded, and activity degradation showed a substantial correlation with concentration reduction rate of precious metal on the carrier surface. NO2 productivity of Used samples all rose. Crystallinity of DPF samples after full vehicle aging in Inlet, Middle and Outlet areas successively increased.