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The present study introduces a novel approach for achieving path tracking of an unmanned bicycle in its local body-fixed coordinate frame. A bicycle is generally recognized as a multibody system consisting of four distinct rigid bodies, namely the front wheel, the front fork, the body frame, and the rear wheel. In contrast to most previous studies, the relationship between a tire and the road is now considered in terms of tire forces rather than nonholonomic constraints. The body frame has six degrees of freedom, while the rear wheel and front fork each have one degree of freedom relative to the body frame. The front wheel exhibits a single degree of freedom relative to the front fork. A bicycle has a total of nine degrees of freedom.

This paper presents a torque distribution strategy for four-wheel independent drive electric vehicles (4WIDEVs) to achieve both handling stability and energy efficiency. The strategy is based on the dynamic adjustment of two optimization objectives. Firstly, a 2DOF vehicle model is employed to define the stability control objective for Direct Yaw moment Control (DYC). The upper-layer controller, designed using Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), is responsible for tracking the target yaw rate and target sideslip angle. Secondly, the lower-layer torque distribution strategy is established by optimizing the tire load rate and motor energy consumption for dynamic adjustment. To regulate the weights of the optimization targets, stability and energy efficiency allocation coefficient is introduced. Simulation results of double lane change and split μ road conditions are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DYC controller.

A multibody model for riderless bicycle dynamics considering tire characteristics is presented. A riderless bicycle is regarded as a multibody system consisting of four rigid bodies: rear wheel, frame, front fork, and front wheel. Every two bodies are connected with a revolute joint. The mass center coordinates and Euler angles of the rigid bodies are used as the generalized coordinates to describe their positions and orientations. The system equations of motion are obtained using Lagrange equations of the first kind. Due to the existence of the three revolute constraints and the use of dependent generalized coordinates, the Lagrange multipliers are employed to account for revolute reaction forces. As for the contact between the wheel and the ground, many studies regarded the wheel as a rigid body with a knife edge, which lead to the nonholonomic constraints between the wheel and the ground.

To study the torque distribution of track and tire in the wheel-track hybrid drive vehicle driving along the shoreline, an analysis model of wheel-track hybrid drive vehicle was established by using multi-body dynamics (MBD), discrete element (DEM), and shoreline pavement construction methods. The vehicle speed, acceleration, torque, vertical load, sinkage, slip, and other indicators when the vehicle passes the shoal at different wheel speed of rotation are analyzed. The relationships between wheel speed of rotation and slip, sinkage and slip, and vertical load and driving moment were studied, and the laws that the sinkage of tires and tracks is positively related to their slippage and the driving moment of wheels and tracks is positively related to their vertical load were obtained.

Many vehicles have been equipped with air springs as elastic elements to get better performance in comfort, but absorbers may not work in an optimal state due to the variation of suspension stiffness. While the function of semi-active suspension is to enable the absorber damping to be adjusted according to different road roughness levels and to coordinate between comfort and handling. To solve the problem of matching the damping coefficient of variable stiffness suspensions represented by air springs, this paper proposed a method for calculating the optimal damping ratio of a semi-active suspension system in real-time with sprung mass acceleration and dynamic tire load to establish the objective function and suspension dynamic deflection as the constraint to reflect the unification of comfort and handling.

Due to the elimination of the mechanical connection between the steering column and steering gear in the Steer-by-Wire (SBW) system, the road-feeling simulation is mainly supplied by the road-feeling motor which loads a drag torque on the steering wheel rather than the actual torque transmitted from the road. To obtain more realistic steering wheel torque, a novel feedback torque of the road-feeling motor fusion estimation method based on the Kalman filter is presented in this paper. Firstly, the model-based estimation method is utilized to estimate the aligning torque between tires and ground which is converted into the rack force through the steering system. Then the estimated rack force is used as the observed data for the Kalman Filter of the sensor-based method and the Kalman Filter-based fusion estimation method is resulted, through which the more realistic feedback torque of the road-feeling motor can be obtained.

The road adhesion coefficient has a great impact on the performance of vehicle tires, which in turn affects vehicle safety and stability. A low coefficient of adhesion can significantly reduce the tire's traction limit. Therefore, the measurement of the coefficient is much helpful for automated vehicle control and stability control. Considering that the road adhesion coefficient is an inherent parameter of the road and it cannot be known directly from the information of the on-vehicle sensors. The novelty of this paper is to construct a road adhesion coefficient observer which considers the noise of sensors and measures the unknown state variable by the trained neural network. A Butterworth filter and Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Interference System (ANFIS) are combined to provide the lateral and longitudinal velocity which cannot be measured by regular sensors.

Electric vehicles driven by in-wheel-motor have the advantages of compact structure and high transmission efficiency, which is one of the most ideal energy-saving, environmentally friendly, and safe driving forms in the future. However, the addition of the in-wheel-motor significantly increases the unsprung mass of the vehicle, resulting in a decrease in the mass ratio of the vehicle body to the wheel, which will deteriorate the ride comfort and safety of the vehicle. To improve the vibration performance of in-wheel-motor driven vehicles, a semi-active inerter-spring-damper (ISD) suspension with in-wheel-motor (IWM) dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) of the electric wheel is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a structure of in-wheel-motor DVA is proposed, which converts the motor into a dynamic vibration absorber of the wheel to suppress the vibration of the unsprung mass.

For vehicles equipped with dry dual clutch transmission, due to the diversity of starting conditions, it is a nontrivial task for control strategy to meet the requirements of all kinds of complex starting conditions, which is easy to cause large starting shock and serious clutch wear. Therefore, it is proposed in this paper an adaptive control strategy for complex starting conditions by adjusting two clutches to participate in the starting process at the same time. On the basis of establishing the transmission system model and clutch model, the starting conditions are identified in terms of starting speed, road adhesion and driver's intention, in which the driver's intention is identified by fuzzy reasoning model. Based on the identification of starting conditions and considering the safety principle, it is selected the appropriate starting gear and clutch combination mode, and adjusted the combination speed of the two clutches to carry out an adaptive control strategy.

Trajectory and velocity tracking are currently one of the core issues in autonomous vehicle control. However, most studies deal with them separately which may cause vehicle instability under extreme conditions. In this paper, a coupled longitudinal and lateral control strategy of trajectory tracking for autonomous vehicles is presented. A lateral controller is implemented with a Linear Time-Varying MPC (LTV-MPC) to generate the front steering angle required for trajectory tracking. The side-slip angle is constrained within an interval to prevent tire saturation. Furthermore, a velocity regulation module in which the reference velocity is calculated considering the curvature of the trajectory and the lateral stability criteria is designed. A longitudinal controller is proposed to provide the traction torque with the obtained reference velocity to cope with the longitudinal velocity tracking problem.

In autonomous driving, variations in tire vertical load, tire slip angle, road conditions, tire pressure and tire friction all contribute to uncertainty in tire cornering stiffness. Even the same tire may vary slightly during the manufacturing process. Therefore, the uncertainty of tire cornering stiffness has an important influence for autonomous driving path planning and control strategies. In this paper, the Chebyshev interval method is used to represent the uncertainty of tire cornering stiffness and is combined with a model predictive control algorithm to obtain the trajectory interval bands under local path planning and tracking control. The accuracy of the tire cornering stiffness model and the path tracking efficiency are verified by comparing with the path planning and control results without considering the corner stiffness uncertainties.

In the petroleum and gas industry, cargo truck is one of the most important ways to transfer the skid-mounting from the manufacturer to the job location. Under the condition of bumpy road surface, the random vibration from the ground can easily cause the resonance of the internal equipment components of the skid-mounting, produce large deformation in the pipeline and equipment connection, and even the equipment will be damaged. In this paper, the finite element analysis model and dynamic rigid flexible coupling model of a TEG (Triethyleneglycol) dehydration unit regeneration skid-mounting are established by using the finite element analysis and multi-body dynamics software. The modal analysis of the skid and the vibration of the whole vehicle under different road excitation and driving conditions are carried out. Two solutions are proposed to improve the anti-vibration ability of the skid, and comparative analysis is made.

The tire is one of the key components that affect vehicle performance and ride quality. The rigid ring model has been widely used in the dynamic simulation of tire rolling uneven road surface, and calculate the tire stiffness and force of rim under quasi-static conditions. However, the traditional spring-damping between rim and belt is not accurate enough to describe the viscous damping force and hysteretic behavior of rubber. Therefore, it is necessary to propose a new rigid ring model, considering the viscoelasticity of tire side rubber and hysteretic behavior of rubber, to better adapt to the intermediate frequency response of tire. In this paper, the rigid ring model introduces the fractional derivative damping and friction force element to enhance the dynamic response of tire in higher frequency. Linear damping is replaced by a three-parameter fractional-order derivative damping model, and a Berg friction element was added between rim and belt.

Tyre behavior plays an important role in vehicle dynamics simulation. The Magic Formula Tyre Model is a semi-empirical tyre model which describes tyre behavior quite accurately in the handling simulation. The Magic Formula Tyre Model needs a set of parameters to describe the tyre properties; the determination of these parameters is nontrivial task due to its nonlinear nature and the presence of a large number of coefficients. In this paper, the homotopy algorithm is applied to the parameter identification of Magic Formula tyre model. A morphing parameter is introduced to correct the optimization process; as a result, the solution is directed converging to the global optimal solution, avoiding the local convergence. The method uses different continuation methods to globally optimize the parameters, which ensures that the prediction of the Magic Formula model can be very close to the test data at all stages of the optimization process.

Steering returnability is an important index for evaluating vehicle handling performance. A systematic method is presented in this paper to reduce the high yaw rate residue and the steering response time for a light duty truck in the steering return test. The vehicle multibody model is established in ADAMS, which takes into consideration of the frictional loss torque and hydraulically assisted steering property in the steering mechanism, since the friction, which exists in steering column, spherical joint, steering universal joint, and steering gear, plays an important role in vehicle returnability performance. The accuracy of the vehicle model is validated by road test and the key parameters are determined by executing the sensitivity analysis, which shows the effect of each design parameter upon returnability performance.

In this paper, a detailed three dimensional (3D) flexible ring tire model is first proposed which includes a rigid rim with thickness, different layers of discretized belt points and a number of massless tread blocks attached on the belt. The parameters of the proposed 3D tire model can be divided into in-plane parameters and out-of-plane parameters. In this paper, the relationship of the in-plane parameters between the 3D tire model and the 2D tire model is determined according to the connections among the tire components. Based on the determined relationship, it is shown that the 3D tire model can produce almost the same prediction results as the 2D tire model for the in-plane tire behaviors.

Vehicle tire performance is an important consideration for vehicle handling, stability, mobility, and ride comfort as well as durability. Significant efforts have been dedicated to tire modeling in the past, but there is still room to improve its accuracy. In this study, a detailed in-plane flexible ring tire model is proposed, where the tire belt is discretized, and each discrete belt segment is considered as a rigid body attached to a number of parallel tread blocks. The mass of each belt segment is accumulated at its geometric center. To test the proposed in-plane tire model, a full-vehicle model is integrated with the tire model for simulation under a special driving scenario: acceleration from rest for a few seconds, then deceleration for a few seconds on a flat-level road, and finally constant velocity on a rough road. The simulation results indicate that the tire model is able to generate tire/road contact patch forces that yield reasonable vehicle dynamic responses.

The ride comfort of the commercial vehicle is mainly affected by several vibration isolation systems such as the primary suspension system, engine mounting system and the cab mounting system. A rigid-flexible coupling model for the truck was built and analyzed in multi-body environment (ADAMS). The method applying the excitation on the wheels center and the engine mountings in time domain was presented. The variables' effects on the ride performance were studied by design of experiment (DOE). The optimal design was obtained by the co-simulation of the ADAMS/View, iSIGHT and Matlab. It was found that the vertical root mean square (RMS) acceleration and frequency-weighted RMS acceleration on the seat track were reduced about 17% and 11% respectively at different speeds relative to baseline according to ISO 2631-1.

This paper describes a simplified model to identify sprung mass using golden section method, the model treats the unsprung mass vertical acceleration as input and the sprung mass vertical acceleration as output, which can avoid the nonlinear influence of trye. Unsprung mass can be also calculated by axle load and the identified sprung mass. This study carries out road test on the vehicle ride comfort and takes a scheme that the group of 20 km/h is used to identify sprung mass and the group of 80 km/h is used to verify the identification result. The similarity of the results from the simulation and experiments performed are, for the sprung mass, 98.59%. A conclusion can be drawn that the simple method to measure the sprung mass in the suspension systems in used vehicles, such as the vehicle shown here, is useful, simple and has sufficient precision.

To provide a greater weight capacity, the tandem axle which is a group of two or more axles situated close together has been used on most heavy truck. In general, the reaction moments during braking cause a change in load distribution among both axles of the tandem suspension. Since load transfer among axles of a tandem suspension can lead to premature wheel lockup, tandem-axle geometry and the brake force distribution among individual axles of a tandem suspension have a pronounced effect on braking efficiency. The braking efficiency has directly influence on the vehicle brake distance and vehicle travelling direction stability in any road condition, so how to improve the braking efficiency is researched in this paper. The load transfer among individual axles is not only determined by vehicle deceleration but also by the actual brake force of each axle for tandem axle suspension, which increases the difficulty of braking efficiency improving.