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This paper describes a methodology to estimate yaw rate of a 4-wheel-drive electric vehicle, in which wheel driven torque can be independently controlled by electric motor. Without non-driven wheels it would be difficult to estimate the vehicle yaw rate precisely, especially when some of the four wheels have large slip ratio. Therefore, a model based estimation methodology is put forward, which uses four wheel speeds, steering wheel angle and vehicle lateral acceleration as input signals. Firstly the yaw rate is estimated through three different ways considering both vehicle kinematics and vehicle dynamics. Vehicle kinematics based method has good estimation accuracy even when the vehicle has large lateral acceleration. However, it can not provide satisfying results when the wheel has large slip ratio. In contrast, vehicle dynamics based method is not so sensitive to wheel slip ratio.

Path following controller of a six-wheel skid-steering vehicle is designed. The vehicle speed is controlled through engine speed control and the lateral vehicle steering is controlled through hydraulic braking on each side. Contrary to the common approaches considering non-holonomic constraints, vehicle dynamic characteristics and nonlinear characteristics of tire are considered. A hierarchical control structure is applied in this vehicle control system. The kinematic controller works out the reference yaw rate and reference vehicle speed. And a robust dynamic controller tracks the reference signal. In addition, the dynamic controller takes actuator ability into account.

In this paper, a novel method is proposed to establish the vehicle yaw stability criterion based on the sideslip angle-yaw rate (β-r) phase plane method. First, nonlinear two degrees of freedom vehicle analysis model is established by adopting the Magic Formula of nonlinear tire model. Then, according to the model in the Matlab/Simulink environment, the β-r phase plane is gained. Emphatically, the effects of different driving conditions (front wheels steering angle, road adhesion coefficient and speed) on the stability boundaries of the phase plane are analyzed. Through a large number of simulation analysis, results show that there are two types of phase plane: curve stability region and diamond stability region, and the judgment method of the vehicle stability domain type under different driving conditions is solved.

Path tracking is the rudimentary capability and primary task for autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs). In this paper, a novel four-wheel-independent-steering (4WIS) and four-wheel-independent-drive (4WID) electric vehicle (EV) is proposed which is equipped with steer-by-wire (SBW) system. For path-tracking controller design, the nonlinear vehicle model with 2 degrees of freedom (DOF) is built utilizing the nonlinear Dugoff tire model. The nonlinear dynamic model of SBW system is conducted as well considering the external disturbances. As to the path-tracking controller design, an integrated four-wheel steering (4WS) and direct yaw-moment control (DYC) system is designed based on the model predictive control (MPC) algorithm to track the target path described by desired yaw angle and lateral displacement. Then, the fast terminal sliding mode controller (FTSMC) is proposed for the SBW system to suppress disturbances.

Jet-wake flow and secondary flows are undesirable in torque converters as they are responsible for flow losses and flow nonuniformity; that is, jet-wake flow and secondary flows negatively affect the torque converter performance. Therefore, it is very important to investigate and minimize the undesirable flows to decrease flow losses in torque converter. However, the existing studies are limited to employ geometry design parameter modifications rather than focusing on the actual causes and intrinsic physical mechanism that generate the flows to reduce the flow losses. In this paper, Calculation model of a torque converter is presented first and a three dimensional CFD code was used to simulate the internal flow field of a torque converter. The simulation results coincide with experimental measurements, which verifies the validity of the method. Based on flow field calculation results, the internal flow field of impeller, turbine and stator were analyzed, respectively.

Micro electric vehicle has gained increasingly popularity among the public due to its compact size and reasonable price in China in recent years. Since design factors that influence the power of electric vehicle drive-motor like maximum speed, acceleration time and so on are not fixed but varies in certain scopes. Therefore, to optimize the process of matching drive-motor’s power, qualitatively and quantitatively studies should be done to determine the optimal parameter combination and improve the design efficiency. In this paper, three basic operating conditions including driving at top speed, ascending and acceleration are considered in the matching process. And the Sobol’ method of global sensitivity analysis (GSA) is applied to evaluate the importance of design factors to the drive-motor’s power in each working mode.

In order to improve the robustness and stability of autonomous vehicle at high speed, a path tracking approach which combines front steering and differential braking is investigated in this paper. A bicycle model with 3-DOFs is established and a linear time-varying predictive model using front steering as its control input can be derived. Based on model predictive theory, the path tracking issue using linear time-varying model predictive control can be transformed into an online quadratic programming problem with constraints. The expected front steering angle can be obtained from online moving optimization. Then the direct yawing control is adopted to treat two types of differential braking control. The first one investigates steady-state gain of yaw rate in linear 2-DOFs vehicle model, and designs a stable differential braking controller which is based on reference yaw rate.

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.

The coordinated control of stability and steering systems in collision avoidance steering evasion has been widely studied in vehicle active safety area, but the studies are mainly aimed at autonomous vehicle without driver or conventional combustion engine vehicle. This paper focuses on the control of hybrid vehicle integrated with rear hub in emergency steering evasion situation, and considering the driver’s characteristics. First, the mathematics model of vehicle dynamics and driver has been given. Second, based on the planned steering evasion path, the model predictive control method is presented for achieving higher evasion path tracking accuracy under driver’s steering input. The prediction model includes an adaptive preview distance driver model and a vehicle dynamics model to predict the driver input and the vehicle trajectory.

The unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is applied to estimate the real vehicle velocity. The velocity estimation algorithm uses lateral acceleration, longitudinal acceleration and yaw rate as inputs. The non-linear vehicle model and Dugoff tire model are built as the estimation model of UKF. Some parameters of Dugoff tire model and vehicle, which can't be measured directly, are identified by the particle swarm optimization (PSO). For the purpose of evaluating the algorithm, the estimation values of UKF are compared with measurements of the Inertial and GPS Navigation system. Besides, the real time property of UKF is tested by xPC Target, which is a real-time software environment from MathWorks. The result of the real vehicle experiment demonstrates the availability of the UKF and PSO in vehicle velocity estimation.

In this paper we present a path following control design for a six-wheel skid-steering vehicle. Contrary to the common approaches that impose non-holonomic constraints, a dynamic vehicle model is established based on a pseudo-static tire model, which uses tire slip to determine tire forces. Our control system admits a modular structure, where a motion controller computes the reference vehicle yaw rate and reference vehicle speed and a dynamics controller tracks these signals. A robust nonlinear control law is designed to track the reference wheel speeds determined by the dynamics controller with proved stability properties. Saturated control techniques are employed in designing the reference yaw rate, which ensures the magnitude of the reference yaw rate does not violate the constraint from the ground-tire adhesion. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed path following control design.

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.

Steering of skid-steered vehicles without steering mechanism is realized by differential drive/brake torque generated from in-wheel motors at left and right sides. Compared to traditional Ackerman-steered vehicles, skid-steered vehicles consume much more energy while steering due to greater steering resistance. Torque allocation is critical to the distributed drive skid-steered vehicles, since it influences not only steering performance, but also energy efficiency. In this paper, the dynamic characteristics of six-wheeled skid-steered vehicles were analyzed, and a 2-DOF vehicle model was established, which is important for both motion tracking control and torque allocation. Furthermore, a hierarchical controller was proposed. Considering tire force characteristics and tire slip, the upper layer calculates the generalized force and desired yaw moment based on anti-windup PI (proportion-integral) control method.

The mechanical claw is an important functional part of intelligent sanitation vehicles. Its performance significantly influences the functional reliability and structural safety of intelligent sanitation vehicles. The load of the trash changes extensively during the work of the mechanical claw. Hence, a comprehensive consideration of structural uncertainty during designing is needed to meet performance requirements. Uncertainty optimization design should be applied to reduce the sensitivity of structural performance to uncertain factors and ensure the robust performance of the mechanical paw structure. In this study, a numerical model of the mechanical claw of novel intelligent sanitation vehicles is established first in SolidWorks, and a finite element model is built by Optistruct. Based on the analysis of uncertain load factors of the mechanical claw, a robust mathematical model of uncertain factors is established by the Gauss-Chebyshev and Smolyak algorithm.

Chinese National projects “13th Five Year Plan” and “Made in China 2025” have both put forward a goal of developing Intelligent and Connected Vehicles(ICV). Shanghai is a typical city of automobile industry which spearhead the development of China’s ICV industry. After the adjustment and transition of industrial structure, Shanghai has initially formed the industrialization layout of ICV covering core areas including environmental perception, intelligent decision-making, actuator, human-computer interaction and vehicle integration. However, currently Shanghai is still in the beginning stage and there exists a large gap with world advanced level in both the core technology and marketization. This article is based on former qualitative survey combined with quantitative analysis which uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) method to objectively evaluate the status quo and development trend of Shanghai’s ICV.

To overcome the shortcoming that vehicles with multiple steering modes need to switch steering modes at parking or very low speeds, a dynamic switch method of steering modes based on MOEA/D (Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Decomposition) was proposed for 4WID-4WIS (Four Wheel Independent Drive-Four Wheel Independent Steering) electric vehicle, considering the smoothness of dynamic switch, the lateral stability of the vehicle and the energy economy of tires. First of all, the vehicle model of 4WID-4WIS was established, and steering modes were introduced and analyzed. Secondly, the conditions for the dynamic switch of steering modes were designed with the goal of stability and safety. According to different constraints, the control strategy was formulated to obtain the target angle of the active wheels. Then aiming at the smoothness of the dynamic switch, the active wheel angle trajectory was constructed based on the B-spline theory.

During current design process of vehicle engine exhaust system, the frequently-used approach mainly concerns an individual component, which usually results in not meeting the overall design requirements or unreasonable design parameters. Here a concept of comprehensive evaluation metrics for vehicle engine exhaust system was established, of which a new weight factor assignment method was proposed, named change rate method, as the core of evaluation system to be especially studied. Taking muffler as an instance, six weight factor assignment schemes were adopted to compare with each other. And the rationality and practicability of the change rate assignment method was verified by the muffler noise experiments. The results show that, the change rate method makes the weight assignment more scientific and rigorous. And the new method can reflect the wishes of designers and completely displays the performance comparison and evaluation between schemes.

Due to the differences in traffic situations and traffic safety laws, standards for extraction of critical driving scenarios (CDSs) vary from different countries and areas around the world. To maintain the characteristic variables under the Chinese typical CDSs, this paper uses the three-layer detection method to extract and detect CDSs in the Natural Driving Data from China-FOT project which executing under the real traffic situation in China. The first layer of detection is mainly based on the feature distributions which deviate from normal driving situations. These distributions associated with speed and longitudinal acceleration/lateral acceleration/yaw rate also quantify the critical levels classification.

Estimating the motion state of peripheral targets is a very important part in the environment perception of intelligent vehicles. The accurate estimation of the motion state of the peripheral targets can provide more information for the intelligent vehicle planning module which means the intelligent vehicle is able to anticipate hazards ahead of time. To get the motion state of the target accurately, the target’s range, velocity, orientation angle and yaw rate need to be estimated. Three-dimensional high-resolution automotive millimeter wave radar can measure radial range, radial velocity, azimuth angle and elevation angle about multiple reflections of an extended target. Thus, the three-dimensional range information and three-dimensional velocity information can be obtained. With multiple three-dimensional high-resolution automotive millimeter-wave radar, it is possible to measure information in various directions of a target.

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.