Search Results

For an electric vehicle driven by four in-wheel motors, the torque of each wheel can be controlled precisely and independently. A closed-loop control method of differential drive assisted steering (DDAS) has been proposed to improve vehicle steering properties based on those advantages. With consideration of acceleration requirement, a three dimensional characteristic curve that indicates the relation between torque and angle of the steering wheel at different vehicle speeds was designed as a basis of the control system. In order to deal with the saturation of motor's output torque under certain conditions, an anti-windup PI control algorithm was designed. Simulations and vehicle tests, including pivot steering test, lemniscate test and central steering test were carried out to verify the performance of the DDAS in steering portability and road feeling.

The integrated control system which combines the differential drive assisted steering (DDAS) and the direct yaw moment control (DYC) for the distributed drive electric vehicle (DDEV) is studied. A handling improvement algorithm for the normal cornering maneuvers is proposed based on motion tracking control. Considering the ideal assistant power character curves at different velocities, an open-loop DDAS control strategy is developed to respond the driver’s demand of steering wheel torque. The DYC strategy contains the steering angle feedforward and the yaw rate feedback. The steering angle feedforward control strategy is employed to improve yaw rate steady gain of vehicle. The maximum feedforward coefficients at different velocities are obtained from the constraint of the motor external characteristic, final feedforward coefficients are calculated according to the ideal assistant power character curve of the DDAS.

This article conducts a research on the active control differential (ACD) yaw moment stability control for central motor driven automobiles. By calculation, the active control differential yaw moment generation ability which is limited by the maximum differential twist ratio and the motor output torque is not enough compared with traditional Electronic Stability Program (ESP). A Matlab and CarSim joint simulation is applied on double lane change and sine wave steering input condition, through which the active control differential effect is analyzed. It is concluded that yaw moment control using active control differential has improved the steering sensitivity and yaw rate tracking effect to some extent in double lane change test and it also has been verified that it works effectively to keep the stability of the vehicle in sine wave test.

Based on the four-wheel-drive electric vehicle (4WD EV), a variable structure control (VSC) strategy is designed in this paper for the anti-lock braking control. With nonpeak friction coefficient as target, sign judgment method of switch function in this VSC strategy is improved and a new control algorithm is proposed. The improved VSC strategy is made robust to the parameters of the algorithm and verified by the computer simulation as well as the hard-in-loop test. The results show that the slip rate can be controlled to a point in the stable area near the optimal slip ratio and the control strategy can effectively realize the anti-lock braking control.

On the dual-motor electric vehicle, which is driven by two electric motors mounted on the front and rear axles respectively, longitudinal dynamic control and electro-dynamic braking can be achieved by controlling the torque of front and rear axle motors respectively. Suspension displacement is related to the wheel torque, thus the pitch of vehicle body can be influenced by changing the torque distribution ratio. The pitch of the body has a great influence on the vehicle comfort, which occurs mainly during acceleration and braking progress. Traditionally active suspension is adopted to control the pitch of body. Instead, in this paper an ideal torque distribution strategy is developed to limit the pitch during acceleration and braking progress. This paper first explores the relationship between the torque distribution and the body pitch through the real vehicle test, which reveals the feasibility of the vehicle comfort promotion by optimizing the torque distribution coefficient.

Distributed drive electric vehicle (EV) is driven by four independent hub motors mounted directly in wheels and retains traditional hydraulic brake system. So it can quickly produce driving/braking motor torque and large stable hydraulic braking force. In this paper a new control allocation strategy for distributed drive electric vehicle is proposed to improve vehicle's lateral stability performance. It exploits the quick response of motor torque and controllable hydraulic pressure of the hydraulic brake system. The allocation strategy consists of two sections. The first section uses an optimal allocation controller to calculate the total longitudinal force of each wheel. In the controller, a dynamic efficiency matrix is designed via local linearization to improve lateral stability control performance, as it considers the influence of tire coupling characteristics over yaw moment control in extreme 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.

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.