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Distributed steering vehicle uses four steering motors to achieve four wheel independent steering. The steering angle of each wheel can be distributed respectively. The tire cornering characteristics are added to traditional steering model to study the angle allocation control algorithm. Using the constraint relation between tire slip angle, vehicle speed, yaw rate and front steering angle, and connecting with the ideal ackermann steering relationship, steering angle allocation of front wheel independent steering and four wheel independent steering is derived. Then simulated analysis is carried out to demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithm. Improvements in tire wear condition are determined by evaluating the optimization in tire lateral force, and the vehicle stability is determined by vehicle slip angle. The simulation results show that the angle allocation control algorithm has a good effect on improving tire wear condition and enhancing the stability of vehicle.

The distributed driving electric vehicle, uses four in-wheel motors as distributed power sources is a typical over-actuated system. Thus, this kind of vehicle has better stability potential and fault tolerance than the conventional one. In this paper, the general structure of fault-tolerance control (FTC) system based on control allocation is analyzed. And a reconfigurable driving force allocation strategy is proposed to ensure the trajectory tracking and stability when some motors’ faults occur. Both the constraints of tire force and actuators are taken into consideration. With motors’ faults treated as the constraints of actuators, FTC is integrated. For validation, the proposed allocation strategy is simulated in co-simulation environment based on Carsim and Matlab/Simulink.

According to the vehicle’s driving conditions, electronically controlled air suspension (ECAS) systems can actively adjust the height of vehicle body, so that better ride comfort and handling stability will be achieved, which can’t be realized by traditional passive suspension. This paper presents a design and implementation of ECAS controller for vehicle. The controller is aimed at adjusting the static and dynamic height of the vehicle. To exactly track the height of the vehicle and satisfy the control demand of air suspension, a height sensor decoding circuit based on the inductance sensor is designed. Based on it, a new height control algorithm is adopted to achieve rapid and precise control of vehicle height. To verify the function of the designed controller and the proposed height control algorithm, an air spring loading test bench and an ECU-in-loop simulation test bench are respectively established.

This paper presents a fault-tolerant control (FTC) algorithm for four-wheel independently driven and steered (4WID/4WIS) electric vehicle. The Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithm is utilized in the fault detection (FD) module so as to estimate the in-wheel motor parameters, which could detect parameter variations caused by in-wheel motor fault. A motion controller based on sliding mode control (SMC) is able to compute the generalized forces/moments to follow the desired vehicle motion. By considering the tire adhesive limits, a reconfigurable control allocator optimally distributes the generalized forces/moments among healthy actuators so as to minimize the tire workloads once the actuator fault is detected. An actuator controller calculates the driving torques of the in-wheel motors and steering angles of the wheels in order to finally achieve the distributed tire forces. If one or more in-wheel motors lose efficacy, the FD module diagnoses the actuator failures first.

For the vehicles equipped with Electric Power Steering (EPS) system, the friction and damping effect brought by assisted motor and worm gear mechanism influence the return ability and handing stability. In order to eliminate the impacts, it is necessary to add return-to-center control in EPS control strategy. This paper proposes a practical active return-to-center control strategy with steering wheel angle signals based on return state identification. In the strategy, the return state of the steering system is identified quickly according to the two signals steering wheel angle velocity and steering wheel torque. Only under return state, a double closed-loop PID control strategy is carried out to calculate a compensation current to improve the return ability. For validating the proposed strategy, a fine EPS model including BLDC assisted motor is built based on carsim and simulink co-simulation platform.

Electro-hydraulic power steering system (EHPS) maintains the advantages of Hydraulic power steering system (HPS) and Electric power steering system (EPS).It is even more superior than this two. In the foreseeable future, this system will have a certain development space. Assistant characters analysis was carried out in this paper. Control strategy based on steering states and feedback control strategy were designed too. Besides, aiming at the emergency steering conditions, steering angular velocity additional controlling strategy was brought out. Under emergency steering conditions, steering angular velocity additional controlling strategy will be applied. Additional steering moment will be calculated to ensure the assistant follow steering rapidly.

Electronically controlled air suspension (ECAS) systems have been widely used in commercial vehicles to improve the ride comfort and handling stability of vehicles, as it can adjust vehicle height according to the driving conditions and the driver's intent. In this paper, the vehicle height adjustment process of ECAS system is studied. A mathematical model of vehicle height adjustment is derived by combining vehicle dynamics theory and thermodynamics theory of variable mass system. Reasons lead to the problems of “over-charging”, “over-discharging” and oscillation during the process of height adjustment are analyzed. In order to solve these problems, a single neuron proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is proposed to realize the accurate control of vehicle height. By simulation and semi-physical rig test, the effectiveness and performance of the proposed control algorithm are verified.

This paper presents an integrated chassis controller with multiple hierarchical layers for 4WID/4WIS electric vehicle. The proposed systematic design consists of the following four parts: 1) a reference model is in the driver control layer, which maps the relationship between the driver's inputs and the desired vehicle motion. 2) a sliding mode controller is in the vehicle motion control layer, whose objective is to keep the vehicle following the desired motion commands generated in the driver control layer. 3) By considering the tire adhesive limits, a tire force allocator is in the control allocation layer, which optimally distributes the generalized forces/moments to the four wheels so as to minimize the tire workloads during normal driving. 4) an actuator controller is in the executive layer, which calculates the driving torques of the in-wheel motors and steering angles of the four wheels in order to finally achieve the distributed tire forces.

Electric Power Steering System (EPS) can directly provide auxiliary steering torque via a motor. The motor and the reducer in mechanical system will make the friction torque in steering system larger, as a result, the ability of steering returning will be reduced. Therefore, during the design of EPS system control strategy, an extra active return-to-middle control strategy is needed. For the fact that most of the low-end vehicles equipped with EPS system do not have a steering wheel angle sensor, a control strategy has to work without the datum of steering wheel angle. This paper proposes an active return-to-middle control method without steering wheel angle sensor, based on the estimated aligning torque which is converted to the pinion, and expounds how to determine the steering system current motion state in detail. This control method will work just during the turning condition, so it has no effect on the EPS basic assist characteristics.

Aiming at estimating the vehicle mass and the position of center of gravity, an on-line two-stage estimator, based on the recursive least square method, is proposed for buses in this paper. Accurate information of the center of gravity position is crucial to vehicle control, especially for buses whose center of gravity position can be varied substantially because of the payload onboard. Considering that the buses start and stop frequently, the first stage of the estimator determines the bus total mass during acceleration, and the second stage utilizes the recursive least-square methods to estimate the position of the center of gravity during braking. The proposed estimator can be validated by the co-simulation with MATLAB/Simulink and TruckSim software, simulation results exhibit good convergence and stability, so the center of gravity position can be estimated through the proposed method in a certain accuracy range.

As a new form of electric vehicle, Four-wheel-independent electric vehicle with X-By-Wire (XBW) inherits all the advantages of in-wheel motor drive electric vehicles. The vehicle steering system is liberated from traditional mechanical steering mechanism and forms an advanced vehicle with all- wheel independent driving, braking and steering. Compared with conventional vehicles, it has more controllable degrees of freedom. The design of the integrated vehicle dynamics control systems helps to achieve the steering, driving and braking coordinated control and improves the vehicle's handling stability. In order to solve the problem of lacking of vehicle state information in the integrated control, some methods are used to estimate the vehicle state of four-wheel-independent electric vehicles with XBW. In order to improve the estimation accuracy, unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is used to estimate the vehicle state variables in this paper.

A full drive-by-wire electric vehicle, named Urban Future Electric Vehicle (UFEV) is developed, where the four wheels' traction and braking torques, four wheels' steering angles, and four active suspensions (in the future) are controlled independently. It is an ideal platform to realize the optimal vehicle dynamics, the marginal-stability and the energy-efficient control, it is also a platform for studying the advanced chassis control methods and their applications. A centralized control system of hierarchical structure for UFEV is proposed, which consist of Sensor Layer, Identification and Estimation Layer, Objective Control Layer, Forces and Motion Distribution Layer, Executive Layer. In the Identification and Estimation Layer, identification model is established by utilizing neural network algorithms to identify the driver characteristics. Vehicle state estimation and road identification of UFEV based on EKF and Fuzzy Logic Control methods is also conducted in this layer.

Electronic braking system (EBS) of commercial vehicle is developed based on Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), for the purpose of enhancing the braking performance. Based on the previous study, this paper aims at the development and research on the control strategy of advanced electronic braking system for commercial vehicle, which mainly includes braking force distribution and multiple targets control strategy. In the study of braking force distribution control strategy, the mass of vehicle and the axle loads will be calculated dynamically and the braking force of each wheel will be distributed regarding to the axle loads. The braking intention recognition takes the brake pad wear into account when braking uncritically, so it can detect a difference in the pads between the front and the rear axles. The brake assist strategy supports the driver during emergency braking and the braking distance is shortened by the reduction of the braking system response time.

Pneumatic Electric Braking System (EBS) is getting widely spread for commercial vehicles. Pneumatic EBS improves the problem of slow response of traditional pneumatic braking system by implementing brake-by-wire. However, the time-delay response and hysteresis of some electro-pneumatic components and some other issues decrease the response and control accuracy of the pneumatic EBS.

Four-wheel independent control electric vehicle is a new type of x-by-wire EV with four wheels independent steering and four wheels independent drive/brake systems. In order to take full advantage of the vehicle's performance potential, this paper presents a novel integrated chassis control strategy. In the paper, the strategy is designed by the hierarchical control structure and divided into integrated control layer and allocation layer. By this method, the control logical can be modularized and simplified. In the integrated control layer, Model Prediction Control (MPC) is adopted to design the integrated control unit, which belongs to be a kind of local optimization algorithm with feedback correction features. Using this method could avoid the system performance degradation caused by the control model mismatch. The control allocation layer is to optimally distribute the vehicle control forces to the steering/driving/brake actuators on each wheel.

Electronic braking system (EBS) of commercial vehicle is developed from ABS to enhance the brake performance. Based on the early development of controller hardware, this paper starts with an analysis of the definition of EBS. It aims at the software design of electronic control unit, and makes it compiled into the controller in the form of C language by the in-depth study about control strategy of EBS in different braking conditions. Designed controller software is divided into two layers. The upper control strategy includes the recognition algorithm of driver's braking intention, estimation algorithm of the vehicle state, conventional braking strategy which consists of the algorithm of deceleration control and braking force distribution, and emergency braking strategy which consists of the algorithm of brake assist control and ABS control.

The hybrid electric city bus, which consists of the electric motor and battery, is obviously different from the traditional buses. This paper focuses on optimizing the characteristics of the automatic mechanical transmission in hybrid electric city bus and does the following studies: firstly, in order to reduce the fuel consumption, the transmission ratio and some structural parameters are optimized with CRUISE software; secondly, the volume and weight of the transmission structure is reduced and optimized by numerical optimization approach, with the limitation of the structural reliability.

The commercial vehicle is widely used in the overland transport. A prediction is given on the 9th annual China automotive industry forum that the number of the global commercial vehicles will reach eight million by the year of 2016. However, since the distance between its gravity centre and the ground is larger than that of the passenger vehicle, considering its comparatively short wheelbase, the rollover accident, which is fatal to the drivers and always makes enormous loss of merchandises, easily occurs in the case of commercial vehicles. As the number of the commercial vehicle is increasing fast, the accidents will occur more frequently, the losses will be increasingly enormous. To solve the problem, many researches about rollover early warning systems have been done. In most cases, it is assumed that the references of the vehicle are given.

The simulation of electro-pneumatic components used in brake systems of commercial vehicles is of great importance in order to understand their characteristics for developing a control logic and improve the braking performance. As the goal of improving the performance of the commercial vehicle pneumatic EBS(Electronically controlled Braking System), static and dynamic characteristics of proportional relay valve for commercial vehicle pneumatic EBS have been simulated by using MATLAB/Simulink environment and validated by testing on hardware-in-the-loop test bench focused on its pressure hysteresis characteristic. The simulation and test results show that the mathematic model for proportional relay valve characteristics is reasonable and reliable, and this simulation tool can be used for research and developing of pneumatic EBS system for commercial vehicle effectively.

In order to accurately characterize the dynamic characteristics of articulated heavy vehicles, 3-dof (degree of freedom) model and 5-dof simplified model of articulated heavy vehicle are established and key parameters of models are identified by the method which is to combine double models with genetic algorithm and by using Trucksim data. Simulation study, which combines 5-dof simplified model with the MAPs of key identified parameters, is carried out. Comparison, which is between simulation results and Trucksim data, indicates that the key parameters of simplified model can be accurately identified, the MAPs of key identified parameters can satisfy the demand of characterizing the actual state of vehicle and lay a foundation for vehicle stability control.