Search Results

The tire mechanics characteristics are essential for analysis, simulation and control of vehicle dynamics. This paper develops the UniTire model for tire forces and moments under combined slip conditions with anisotropic tire slip stiffness. The anisotropy of tire slip stiffness, which means the difference of tire longitudinal slip stiffness and cornering stiffness, will cause that the direction of tire resultant shear stress in adhesion region is different from that in sliding region. Eventually the tire forces and moments under combined slip conditions will be influenced obviously. The author has proposed a “direction factor” before to modify the direction of resultant force in the tire-road contact patch, which can describe tire forces at cornering/braking combination accurately. However, the aligning moments which are very complicated under combined slip conditions are not considered in previous analysis.

A novel predictable tire model has been proposed for combined braking and cornering forces, which is based on only a few pure baking and pure cornering tests. It avoids elaborate testing of all kinds of combinations of braking and side forces, which are always expensive and time consuming. It is especially important for truck or other large size tires due to the capability constraints of tire testing facilities for combined shear forces tests. In this paper, the predictive model is based on the concept of slip circle and state stiffness method. The slip circle concept has been used in the COMBINATOR model to obtain the magnitude of the resultant force under combined slip conditions; however the direction assumption used in the COMBINATOR is not suitable for anisotropic tire slip stiffness.

This paper focuses on the modeling process of incorporating inflation pressure into the UniTire model for pure cornering. Via observing and manipulating the tire experimental data, the effects of inflation pressure on the tire cornering property are analyzed in detail, including the impacts on cornering stiffness, the peak friction coefficient, the curvature of transition region and the pneumatic trail. And the brief mechanism explanations are also given for some of these impacts. The results show that some effects of inflation pressure are similar to that of vertical load on the non-dimensional tire cornering property, and there are strong interactive effects between the two operating conditions. Therefore, in order to obtain concise expressions, the inflation pressure is incorporated into the UniTire tire model by analogy with the expressions for vertical load, and the interactive effects are also taken into account.

A long vehicle is more difficult to drive than a short one, but the mechanism of this phenomenon is still ambiguous. This paper will devote main effort to elaborate this phenomenon based on the theory of preview-follower driver model. Drivers always hope that the vehicle center can travel according to a predetermined trajectory. However, there is often a deviation between the vehicle center predicted by the driver and the actual center. As for this phenomenon, a conception of driver preview eccentricity is proposed. In order to analyze the influence of the proposed conception on vehicle driving track, a multi-axle steering vehicle model is built and some basic expressions of important parameters are deduced from this model firstly. Then, the developmental driver model with the factor of preview eccentricity based on preview-follower theory is established in the state of low velocity quasi-static. Subsequently, this model for long vehicles is extended to a dynamic driver model.

This paper presents an ideal force distribution control method for the electric vehicle, which is equipped with four independently in-wheel motors, in order to improve the lateral stability of the vehicle. According to the friction circle of tyre force, the ideal distribution control method can be obtained to make the front and rear wheels reach the adhesion limit at the same time in different conditions. Based on this, the force re-distributed control is applied to enhance the security of vehicle when the in-wheel motor is in the failure mode. The simulation result shows that: the force distributed method can not only improves the lateral stability of the vehicle but also enhances the vehicle safety.

This paper presents a torque distribution algorithm to improve the energy efficiency of four-wheel-drive (4WD) electric vehicles with PMSM hub motors. In order to optimize the torque distribution method, at first the motor model considering the affect of iron loss and the loss model of multi-motors drive system of 4WD electric vehicle with PMSM hub motors, which operate at straight-line condition, are established. Besides, realize the online identification of motor parameters based on the MARS, which is important for updating the loss model parameters of the motor drive system. By doing this, the ideal torque distribution ratio can be obtained from the loss model in real-time. The simulation result using different distribution algorithms shows that the optimized torque distribution algorithm based on the loss model can be useful for improving the energy efficiency.