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A fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) algorithm of 4WID/4WIS Electric Vehicles has been proposed in this study aiming to find the actuator faults. The 4WID/4WIS EV is one of the promising architectures for electric vehicle designs which is driven independently by four in-wheel motors and steered independently by four steering motors. The 4WID/4WIS EVs have many potential abilities in advanced vehicle control technologies, but diagnosis and accommodation of the actuator faults becomes a significant issue. The proposed FDD approach is an important part of the active fault tolerant control (AFTC) algorithm. The main objective of the FDD approach is to monitor vehicle states, find the faulty driving motor and then feedback fault information to the controller which would adopt appropriate control laws to accommodate the post-fault vehicle control system.

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.

Steer-by-Wire system is capable of improving the performance of vehicle handling and stability, and assisting driving. It becomes a key technique to control front wheel angle and simulate the steering resistance delivered to the driver because of removing mechanical linkages between the steering wheel and the front wheels. This paper proposes a bilateral control method of steering wheel torque drive/pinion angle feedback, which is disaccustomed of controlling steering wheel block and steering actuator as master-slave plants. The pinion angle, steering wheel angle and its torque signals are used in the control logic without estimating or measuring the tire/road force. Simulations and vehicle experiments proceeded with this proposed method and the results confirmed that it achieves the bilateral control of the position and torque between the two plants.

This paper presents a study on steering effort preference of Chinese drivers based on ADSL Driving Simulator. The results of the simulation test demonstrates that Chinese drivers' steering effort preference increases with vehicle speed, which is similar to European and Japanese drivers', but the mean preference effort level itself is lower than that of European and Japanese drivers' and this same steering effort preference increases obviously with lateral acceleration in linear region (lateral acceleration level lower than 0.3g) while not as evidently in nonlinear region (lateral acceleration level higher than 0.3g).

It is difficult to obtain state variables accurately or economically while vehicle is moving, however these state variables are significant for chassis control. Although many researches have been done, a complex model always leads to a control system with poor real-time performance, while simple model cannot show the real characteristics. So, in order to estimate the value of yaw rate and side slip angle accurately and sententiously, an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) observer is proposed, which is based on an ameliorated 2-DOF “bicycle model”. The EKF algorithm is achieved numerically and verified by the results from the real field test.

The driving range of the electric vehicle (EV) greatly restricts the development of EVs. The vehicles waste plenty of energy on account of automobiles frequently braking under the city cycle. The regenerative braking system can convert the braking kinetic energy into the electrical energy and then returns to the battery, so the energy regeneration could prolong theregenerative braking system. According to the characteristics of robustness in regenerative braking, both regenerative braking and friction braking based on fuzzy logic are assigned after the front-rear axle’s braking force is distributed to meet the requirement of braking security and high-efficient braking energy regeneration. Among the model, the vehicle model and the mechanical braking system is built by the CRUISE software. The paper applies the MATLAB/SIMULINK to establish a regenerative braking model, and then selects the UEDC city cycle for model co-simulation analysis.

A new electric power steering system (EPS) dynamic friction model based on normalized Bouc-Wen model is given, as well as its structure form and model features. In addition, experimental method is used to identify corresponding parameters. In order to improve road feel feedback, this paper analyzes the shortcoming of traditional constant friction compensation control method and proposes a variable friction compensation control method which the friction compensation current changes according to the assist characteristic gain. Through simulation and real vehicle test verification, variable friction compensation control method eliminates the effect of basic assist characteristic, and improves the driver’s road feel under high speed.

This paper introduces the characteristics of the 4 wheel independent driving/4 wheel independent steering (4WID/4WIS) electric vehicle (EV). Models of Subsystems and the vehicle are constructed based on Matlab/simulink. The vehicle model allows the inputs of different drive torques and steer angles of four wheels. The dynamic characteristics of drive motors and steer motors are considered, and also it can reflect the vehicle longitudinal dynamics change due to the increase of the mass and inertia of the four wheels. Besides, drive mode selection function that is unique to this type vehicle is involved. Simulations and analyses of crab, oblique driving and zero radius turning which are the special conditions of 4WID/4WIS EV are conducted. The results show that the model can reflect the dynamic response characteristics. The model can be used to the simulation analyses of handling, stability, energy saving and control strategies verification of 4WID/4WIS EVs.

This essay aims to develop an electrically controlled steering test bench and lay a solid foundation for the development of steering system. The first part mainly introduces the function, structure and working principle of the test bench. For the hardware system, it includes the steering system, fixture, sensors as well as a frameless disk motor for carrying out automatic motor input, and a dual linear motor system selected as the road resistance simulation actuator. As for the software, MATLAB/Simulink, CarSim, RTI and ControlDesk are used. Therefore, with the help of real-time simulation platform, researchers can not only build control strategy and dynamic model but also control the experiment and tune parameters in real-time. The second part of the essay aims to identify both electric and mechanical parameters of R-EPS system by carrying out tests on the proposed test bench. As parameters are successfully identified, the feasibility of the test bench is also verified.

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 passive fault-tolerant performance of the integrated vehicle controller (IVC) applied on 4WID/4WIS Electric Vehicles has been investigated in this study. The 4WID/4WIS EV is driven independently by four in-wheel motors and steered independently by four steering motors. Thanks to increased control flexibility of the over-actuated architecture, Control Allocation (CA) can be applied to control the 4WID/4WIS EVs so as to improve the handling and stability. Another benefit of the over-actuated architecture is that the 4WID/4WIS Electric Vehicle has sufficient redundant actuators to fight against the safety critical situation when one or more actuators fail.

Impact torque will be generated on the steering wheel when one tire suddenly blows out on high way, which may cause driver's psychological stress and result in driver's certain misoperations on the car. In this paper, the model of tire blowout vehicle was established; the tire blowout was detected based on the change rate of tire pressure, meanwhile, the rack force caused by tire blowout was estimated through a reduce observer; finally the compensation current was figured out to reduce the impact torque on the steering wheel. Results of simulation tests showed that the control strategy proposed in this paper can effectively reduce the impact torque on the steering wheel and reduce the driver's discomfort caused by tire blowout.

Nowadays, electric control steering system has been a main tendency. It consists of Electric Power Steering (EPS) system, Steer by Wire (SBW) system and Active Front Steering (AFS) system. EPS is more widely applied and its technology is more developed. By 2010, the cars equipped with EPS have reached almost 30%. This paper describes one integrated test bench which can test and verify electric control steering system. The main target of the paper is to design and set up a resistance loading system for the test bench referred. The paper takes EPS as a prototype to verify the designed resistance loading system. If the resistance loading system provides a precise simulated torque for the bench, the results of tests will be more approximate with vehicle tests and the acquired data will be reliable for electric control steering system's design and improvement. The linear electric cylinder applied in the loading system is used to provide simulated torque for the bench.

On-center handling has drawn lots of attention from consumers and car manufactures for its extraordinarily large effect on vehicle security at high speed. So far, there are a large number of objective evaluation indices for on-center handling, but it is not clear which ones are the key points on evaluation indices. In this paper, the authors propose a simplified on-center handling objective evaluation index system. Firstly, a basic on-center handling objective evaluation index system is summarized based on the ones of ISO, GM, MIRA, TRC and Hyundai, and then dynamics analysis on each index is conducted so as to primarily eliminate the redundant indices. Secondly, the repetitive indices are cut out again by the correlation analysis among indices in objective tests for eight types of vehicles. Thirdly, the importance factor of each subjective evaluation index is gained on the basis of subjective evaluation tests for eight types of vehicles by the weighed principal component analysis.

The quality of the brake system is a significant safety factor in commercial vehicles on the roads. With the development of automobile technology, the single function ABS system didn't meet active safety requirements of the user. The Electronically Controlled Brake System (EBS) system will replace the ABS system to become the standard safety equipment of commercial vehicles in the near future. EBS can be said an enhanced ABS system, it contains load sensor, brake valve sensor and pressure sensor of chamber, etc, and it is more advantages than ABS. This paper describes a flexible integrated test bench for ABS/EBS Electronic Control Unit (ECU) based on Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation technique. It consists of most commercial vehicle pneumatic braking system components (from brake pedal valve, brake caliper to brake chambers), and uses the dSPACE real-time simulation system to communicate to the hardware I/O interface.

A fault tolerant control (FTC) approach based on reconfigurable control allocation for four-wheel independently driven and steered (4WID/4WIS) electric vehicles against driving motor failures is proposed in order to improve vehicle safety, performance and maneuverability after the driving motor failures. The proposed fault tolerant control method consists of the following three parts: 1) a fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) module that monitors vehicle driving condition, detects and diagnoses actuator failures; 2) a motion controller that computes the generalized forces/moments to track the desired vehicle motion using model predictive control method; 3) a reconfigurable control allocator that optimally distributes the generalized forces/moments to four wheels aiming at minimizing the total tire usage. The FTC approach is based on the reconfigurable control allocation which reallocates the generalized forces/moments among healthy actuators once the actuator failures is detected.

Steering-By-Wire (SBW) system has advantages of advanced vehicle control system, which has no mechanical linkage to control the steering wheel and front wheels. It is possible to control the steering wheel actuator and front wheels actuator steering independently. The goal of this paper is to use a joystick to substitute the conventional steering wheel with typical vehicle SBW system and to study a variable steering ratio design method. A 2-DOF vehicle dynamic reference model is built and focused on the vehicle steering performance of drivers control joystick. By verifying the results with a hardware-in-the-loop simulation test bench, it shows this proposed strategy can improve vehicle maneuverability and comfort.

The paper describes an algorithm, which estimates the mass of large buses and axle load distribution using pedal position, wheel speed and the wheel cylinder pressure sensors. This algorithm is allowed to achieve the purpose without additional sensors by using the rotational speed sensors from ABS system and air pressure sensors in brake cylinders form ESP system. The axle load distribution algorithm mainly consists of three steps. Firstly, deceleration of the bus is estimated and then the mass of the bus is estimated. After that, the position of the mass centre is estimated. Taking account of the tire nonlinear characteristics under longitudinal forces and vertical forces, mass estimation, deceleration and the position of the mass centre of buses is corrected by the coefficient, which is determined by the wheel cylinder pressure, the wheel speed and mass estimation.