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The drivability plays an important role for marketability and competitiveness of passenger car in meeting some customer requirements, which directly affects the driving experience and the desire of purchasing. In this paper, a framework of objective drivability evaluation with multi-source information fusion for passenger car is proposed. At first, according to vehicle powertrain system and optimization theory, certain vehicle performances, which are closely related to objective drivability are analyzed, including vehicle longitudinal acceleration, vehicle speed, engine torque, engine speed, gear position, accelerator pedal, brake signal and voltage signal. Then, combined with the evaluation criterion of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), mean error (ME), root mean squared error (RMSE) and signal smoothness (SS), a de-noising method is developed for the drivability evaluation information.

In automatic driving application, the velocity planner can be considered as a key factor to ensure the safety and comfort. One of the most important tasks of the velocity planner is to simulate the velocity characteristics of human drivers. In this paper, two Driver In-the-Loop (DIL) experiments are designed to explain velocity characteristics of human drivers. In the first experiment, static obstacles are placed on both sides of the straight road to shorten the cross range that vehicles can driver across. Moreover, different cross ranges are set to study the influence of the steering wheel error. In the second experiment, velocity characteristics are investigated under the condition of different road widths and curvatures in a U-turn road contour. In both tests, different drivers’ preview behavior is analyzed through the operation of throttle, braking, and steering.

In this paper a new pressure control method of a modified accumulator-type Electro-hydraulic Braking System (EHB) is proposed. The system is composed of a hydraulic motor pump, an accumulator, an integrated master cylinder, a pedal feel simulator, valves and pipelines. Two pressurizing modes are switched between by-motor and by-accumulator to adapt different pressure boost demands. A differentiator filtering raw sensor signal and calculating pedal speed is designed. By using the pedal feel simulator, the relationship between wheel pressures and brake force is decoupled. The relationships among pedal displacement, pedal force and wheel pressure are calibrated by experiments. A model-based PI controller with predictor is designed to lower the influences caused by delay. Moreover, a self-tuning regulator is introduced to deal with the parameter’s time-varying caused by temperature, brake pads wearing and delay variation.

In order to overcome hysteresis and dead zone problems caused by friction for the proportional solenoid valve, and improve rapidity and stability of the pneumatic system on hydraulic retarder, a closed-loop control strategy based on valve coil current was proposed. The high-frequency low-amplitude dither signal was introduced into the proportional solenoid valve. With the proper dither signal, the stick-slip motion of the valve core was transformed into a steady one, and its dynamic performance was improved. Consequently, response time of retarder was reduced during gear changing. The proportional valve coil current was measured as a feedback for a closed-loop control strategy. Combining with the closed-loop strategy, the PI control algorithm was adopted to make sure that valve current was in accordance with the target value. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signal was used for the driving of proportional solenoid valve.

Dynamic modeling and state estimation are significant in the trajectory tracking and stability control of the intelligent vehicle. In order to meet the requirement of the stability control of the eight-in-wheel-motor-driven intelligent vehicle, a full vehicle dynamics model with 12 degrees of freedom, including the longitudinal, lateral, yaw and roll motion of the body, and rotational motion of 8 wheels, is established for the research of the intelligent vehicle in this paper. By simulation with MATLAB/SIMULINK and by comparison with the TruckSim software, the reliability and practicality of the dynamics model are verified. Based on the established dynamics model, an extended Kalman filter (EKF) state observer is proposed to estimate the vehicle sideslip angle, roll angle and yaw rate, which are the key parameters to the stability control of the intelligent vehicle.

This paper presents a Driver-In-the-Loop (DIL) bench test system for development of ESC controller. The real-time platform is built-up based on NI/PXI system and the real steering/throttle/braking actuator. In addition, the CarSim provides the vehicle model and the animator for virtual driving environment. A hierarchical ESC controller is proposed in MATLAB/Simulink then download into PXI. In the upper motion controller, the sliding mode theory is adopted and the logic threshold algorithm is used in the lower slip controller. Finally, ESC test is implemented under typical conditions by DIL and Model-In-the-Loop (MIL). The results show that, DIL could make up the shortage of driver model which can’t accurately simulate the emergency response of real driver. Therefore, DIL test could verify the ESC controller more accurately and effectively with considering the human-vehicle-road environment.

This paper presents a novel application of hydraulic electromagnetic energy-regenerative shock absorber (HESA) into commercial vehicle suspension system and vehicle road performance are simulated by the evaluating indexes (e.g. root-mean-square values of vertical acceleration of sprung mass, dynamic tire-ground contact force, suspension deflection and harvested power; maximum values of pitch angle and roll angle). Firstly, the configuration and working principle of HESA are introduced. Then, the damping characteristics of HESA and the seven-degrees-of-freedom vehicle dynamics were modeled respectively before deriving the dynamic characteristics of a vehicle equipped with HESA. The control current is fixed at 7A to match the similar damping effect of traditional damper on the basis of energy conversion method of nonlinear shock absorber.

Focusing on distributed electric vehicles with in-wheel motors, a novel regenerative braking control strategy based on braking intention is proposed. Firstly, a design scheme for the regenerative braking system is described. Four in-wheel motors and an Electro-Hydraulic Braking (EHB) system are respectively designed for regenerative braking and hydraulic braking. Then, Braking intention recognition self-learning libraries are trained based on Hidden Markov Model method, which is validated by driver-in-loop tests. According to three speed states and four braking intentions, the regenerative braking control strategy for multiple brake modes is developed. The coefficient of regenerative braking is defined to describe the intervening time and proportion of motor maximum regenerative braking.

Path tracking is one of the critical technologies in the autonomous vehicle. Its performance may be seriously affected by disturbance resulting from unpredictable environment like changes in road friction coefficient and parameter uncertainty such as cornering stiffness and mass caused by errors of measurement. Besides, since the vehicle system consisting of many systems is an extremely complex nonlinear system, it is almost impossible for us to establish a precise model of a vehicle especially when it is moving. These inevitable factors influence the control accuracy and even threaten the stability and safety of the vehicle system. This paper proposed a promising solution to this problem, robust MPC (Model Predictive Control) combined with the optimal preview controller for path tracking problems of an autonomous vehicle. The state space model in tracking error variables of a passenger vehicle used for path tracking application is established.

In order to perform differential control instead of the mechanical differential and improve the steering performance of distributed electric vehicles, a two-level differential speed steering control strategy is proposed. Firstly, an upper-layer controller to track the yaw rate is designed based on PID feedback and 3-D lookup table model, which could shorten the response time and reduce the impact of model parameters mismatch. Then, in order to improve the robustness to external disturbances and parameter uncertainties, a lower-layer controller to track the wheel speed is proposed based on integral sliding mode control. Moreover, three simulations are conducted to validate the proposed strategy. The first simulation results indicate that the driving torques of the inner and outer wheels are distributed properly to avoid wheel slip. In the second simulation, when the conventional steering system fails, the proposed control strategy could avoid vehicle losing steering function.

Analogous to a vacuum boosted system, Electro-Hydraulic Braking System (EHB) is free from engine vacuum and supplies a braking force proportional to driver input. The independence of engine vacuum makes it especially suitable to be used in electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). As a key component of EHB, master cylinder is driven by the pump rather than the vacuum booster. Even if the pump fails, the cylinder can also build proper pressure. Meanwhile, in order to maintain the pedal feeling, a pedal stroke simulator is applied in the system. In this paper, aiming at decreasing the size and cost of master cylinder and providing an ideal pedal feeling without compromise of performance, a new integrated master cylinder of EHB system is designed including two parts: master cylinder and pedal stroke simulator. The key components of the integrated master cylinder are motor pump, solenoid valves and composite springs.

In order to improve the drivability of passenger cars with dual clutch transmission (DCT) and reveal the criteria for objective evaluation criteria and characteristic index and feature index division of vehicles under specific working conditions, a drivability evaluation system that integrates data-driven and the consistency between subjective and objective is proposed. At first, combined with the control principle and dynamics theory of specific working conditions, a quantitative index system of vehicle drivability is constructed, including three modules: data source, evaluation working conditions and objective indicators. Then, a novel intelligent drivability objective evaluation tools (I-DOET) is designed, including data acquisition, de-noising, working condition recognition, feature extraction and automatic scoring.

In order to improve the driving experience of drivers and the efficiency of vehicle development, a method of objective drivability for passenger car powertrain is proposed, which is based on prior knowledge, principal component analysis (PCA) and SMART principle. First, drivability parameters of powertrain for passenger cars are determined according to working principle of powertrain, including engine torque, engine speed, gearbox position, accelerate pedal, brake pedal, steering wheel angle, longitudinal acceleration and lateral acceleration, etc. The drivability quantitative index system is designed based on field test data, prior knowledge and SMART principles. Then, D-S evidence theory and sliding window method are applied to identify objective drivability evaluation conditions of powertrain for passenger cars, including static gearshift conditions, starting conditions, creep conditions, tip-in, tip out, upshift conditions, acceleration, downshift conditions and de-acceleration.

Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is an important measure to proactively guarantee vehicle safety. In this paper, the method of four-wheel hub-motor torque control is compared with the traditional single-wheel hydraulic brake control in ESC system. The control strategy adopts the hierarchical structure. In upper controller, the stability of the vehicle is identified by threshold method, the additional yaw moment control uses a way to get the moment including feedforward and feedback parts based on the linear quadratic regulator (LQR). The medium controller is tire slip rate control, in order to get the optimal target slip rate from the upper additional yaw moment, a method of quadratic programming to optimize the longitudinal force is proposed for each wheel. The inputs of tire state for the magic tire model is introduced so as to calculate the target slip rate from the target longitudinal force.