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Knowledge of the tire slip ratio can greatly improve vehicle longitudinal stability and its dynamic performance. Most conventional slip ratio observers were mainly designed based on input of non-driven wheel speed and estimated vehicle speed. However, they are not applicable for electric vehicles (EVs) with four in-wheel motors. Also conventional methods on speed estimation via integration of accelerometer signals can often lead to large offset by long-time integral calculation. Further, model uncertainties, including steady state error and unmodeled dynamics, are considered as additive disturbances, and may affect the stability of the system with estimated state error. This paper proposes a novel slip ratio observer based on input-to-state stability (ISS) method for electric vehicles with four-wheel independent driving motors.

A high-precision steady state tire model is critical in the tire and vehicle matching research. For the moment, the popular Magic Formula model is an empirical model, which requires the pure and combined test data to identify the model parameters. Although MTS Flat-trac is an efficient tire test rig, the long test period and high test cost of a complete tire model tests for handling are yet to be solved. Therefore, it is necessary to explore a high accuracy method for predicting tire complex mechanical properties with as few test data as possible. In this study, a method for predicting tire combined slip characteristics from pure cornering and pure longitudinal test data has been investigated, and verified by comparing with the test data. Firstly, the prediction theory of UniTire model is introduced, and the formula for predicting combined slip characteristics based on constant friction coefficient is derived.

The brake-by-wire system (BBW) is better match the new energy vehicle in the future direction of development. The electro-mechanical brake (EMB) is lack of the brake failure backup and need a high 42 V voltage for the power supply. This paper presents a new brake-by-wire hybrid brake system (HBS) with the electro-hydraulic brake (EHB) equipped on the front wheels and the EMB equipped on the rear wheels. The combination of these two brake-by-wire systems has advantages of both the EHB and EMB system. The EMB on the rear wheels totally removing the rear pipes and can be simply mounted. In addition, since the need of brake torque on the rear axle is relatively small, the power supply of EMB can be reduced to 12 V. Meanwhile, the EHB on the front wheels has the failure backup function through the hydraulic line. The HBS can quickly and accurately regulate four wheels brake force of vehicles which can well meet the requirement of antilock brake system (ABS).

The Electronic Stability Program (ESP), as a key actuator of traditional automobile braking system, plays an important role in the development of intelligent vehicles by accurately controlling the pressure of wheels. However, the ESP is a highly nonlinear controlled object due to the changing of the working temperature, humidity, and hydraulic load. In this paper, an accurate pressure control strategy of single wheel during active braking of ESP is proposed, which doesn’t rely on the specific parameters of the hydraulic system and ESP. First, the structure and working principle of ESP have been introduced. Then, we discuss the possibility of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) control based on the mathematical model of the high-speed switching valve. Subsequently, the pressure building characteristics of the inlet and outlet valves are analyzed by the hardware in the Loop (HiL) experimental platform.

The vehicle pull problem is very important to driving safety. Major factors that may cause the pull problem related to tire include variations of geometric dimension (e.g. RPK) and stiffness (e.g. cornering stiffness, aligning stiffness), plysteer and conicity. In previous research, the influencing mechanism of these factors was well studied. But in fact, vehicle pull problem caused by tire is probabilistic. When we assemble four tires onto the car, there could be 384 different assembly arrangements. If there are significant differences among these four tires, there will also be significant differences in the influence of different tire assembly schemes on vehicle pull, which has not been systematically discussed in previous studies. If we want to evaluate the pull performance of all these arrangements by vehicle test, it will be a time consuming process which will take almost 24 working days, along with a high test expense.

Steering movement is the most basic movement of the vehicle, in the car driving process, the driver through the steering wheel has always been to control the direction of the car, in order to achieve their own driving intention. Four Wheel Steering (4WS) is an advanced vehicle control technique which can markedly improve vehicle steering characteristics. Compared with traditional front wheel steering vehicles, 4WS vehicles can steer the front wheels and the rear wheels individually for cornering, according to the vehicle motion states such as the information of vehicle speed, yaw velocity and lateral acceleration. Therefore, 4WS can enhance the handling stability and improve the active safety for vehicles.

The slip ratio of vehicle driving wheels is easily beyond a reasonable range in the complex and changeable driving conditions. In order to achieve the adaptive acceleration slip regulation of four-wheel driving (4WD) vehicle, a fuzzy control strategy of Automatic Drive Train Management (ADM) system based on road situation identification was proposed in this paper. Firstly, the influence on the control strategy of ADM system was analyzed from two aspects, which included the different road adhesion coefficients and the vehicle’s ramp driving state. In the meantime several quantitative expressions of relevant control parameters were derived. Secondly, the fuzzy logic control algorithm was adopted to design a road situation identification subsystem and a ramp driving state identification subsystem respectively. The former was based on the μ-S curve model, and the latter was based on the vehicle driving equilibrium equation.

In order to study the influence of body flexibility on the truck ride comfort, a 4 DOF half vibration model of truck based on the motion synthesis between rigid body and body flexibility is established using elastic beam theory of equal section with both free ends. At the same time, a corresponding 2 DOF rigid vibration model is also built. The frequency response functions of system and response variables of two models are derived based on front wheel. The power spectral densities and the root mean square values of body acceleration, dynamic deflections and relative dynamic loads are obtained. By comparing the simulation results of rigid-elastic model and rigid model, it shows that body flexibility has a great impact on truck ride comfort and it cannot be ignored.

Since steering wheel torque feedback is one of the crucial factors for drivers to gain road feel and ensure driving safety, it is especially important to simulate the steering torque feedback for a driving simulator. At present, steering wheel feedback torque is mainly simulated by an electric motor with gear transmission. The torque response is typically slow, which can result in drivers’ discomfort and poor driving maneuverability. This paper presents a novel torque feedback device with magnetorheological (MR) fluid and coil spring. A phase separation control method is also proposed to control its feedback torque, including spring and damping torques respectively. The spring torque is generated by coil spring, the angle of coil spring can be adjusted by controlling a brushless DC motor. The damping torque is generated by MR fluid, the damping coefficient of MR fluid can be adjusted by controlling the current of excitation coil.

Tire-road friction condition is crucial to the safety of vehicle driving. The emergence of autonomous driving makes it more important to estimate the friction limit accurately and at the lowest possible excitation. In this paper, an early detection method of tire-road friction coefficient based on pneumatic trail under cornering conditions is proposed using an intelligent tire system. The previously developed intelligent tire system is based on a triaxial accelerometer mounted on the inner liner of the tire tread. The friction estimation scheme utilizes the highly sensitive nature of the pneumatic trail to the friction coefficient even in the linear region and its approximately linear relationship with the excitation level. An indicator referred as slip degree indicating the utilization of the road friction is proposed using the information of pneumatic trail, and it is used to decide whether the excitation is sufficient to adopt the friction coefficient estimate.

The powers generated by the skidding and slipping of a vehicle in unit time during driving are referred to as parasitic power. It has significant effects on wear on the tires, service life, and overall efficiency. However, existing methods to calculate parasitic power expressions that are not solvable in some cases, the reasonableness of the results of their calculations cannot be verified by experiments and the parameters of the loader cannot be calculated during the design of the vehicle. In this paper, we systematically analyze the mechanism of generation of parasitic power based on the differences in the radii of the tires of loaders. We innovatively propose a theoretical calculation method to calculate the wheel circumference parasitic work during the design of the loader. The results of experiments show that errors between the theoretical and experimental values of the wheel circumference parasitic work calculated under various working conditions were smaller than 5%.

A general principle scheme of IEHB (Integrated Electro-Hydraulic Brake system) is proposed, and the working principle of the system is simply introduced in this paper. Considering the structure characteristics of the hydraulic control unit of the system, a kind of time-sharing control strategy is adopted to realize the purpose of independent and precise hydraulic pressure regulation of each wheel brake cylinder in various brake conditions of a vehicle. Because of the strong nonlinear and time varying characteristics of the dynamic brake pressure regulation processes of IEHB, its comprehensive brake performance is mainly affected by temperature, humidity, load change, the structure and control parameters of IEHB, and so on.

As bottom layer actuator for the AEB system, the active brake system and the brake force control of tractor-semitrailer have been the hot topics recently. In this paper, a set of active pneumatic brake system was designed based on the traditional brake system of tractor-semitrailer, which can realize the active brake of the vehicle under necessary conditions. Then, a precise mathematical model of the active pneumatic brake system was built by referring the flow characteristics of the solenoid valve, and some tests were implemented to verify the accuracy and validity of the active brake system model. Based on the model, an active pneumatic brake pressure control strategy combining the feedforward and feedback controlling modes was designed. By generating the PWM control signal, it can precisely control the desired wheel cylinder brake pressure of the active brake system. Finally, the brake pressure control strategy was validated both by simulation tests and bench tests.

Vibration tests and modal analysis method were used to recognize cause of steering wheel's idle shaking, it was found that the steering wheel's operating modal was close to engine's second order excitation frequency, which caused steering wheel's idle shaking. Five improvements were presented to relief this problem, including structural optimization, lightweight design of steering wheel, Installation of dynamic vibration absorber, matching of power train mount and reduction of engine idle speed, the effectiveness and rationality of the improvements was verified through experiments.

Electro-Hydraulic Brake (EHB) system is a kind of active control brake systems of automobile, the pedal from the calipers actuation separated and no longer limited by conventional hardware. The system may come together with ABS, ESP, and ASR function, also the communication with other systems is done via the CAN network. EHB system may be classified a “stepping stone” technology to full brake-by-wire and brings huge transform for the performance of braking system. In this paper, vehicle dynamic models were established and accomplished the control strategy for vehicle stability control with EHB system which can adjust wheel and vehicle motion, improve the lateral and longitudinal vehicle stability. This result was verified by simulation which shows that the controller is effective on improving the vehicle stability.

The Electromechanical Brake Booster system (EMBB) integrates active braking and energy recovery and becomes a novel brake-by-wire solution that substitutes the vacuum booster. While the intelligent unmanned vehicle is in unstable state, the EMBB can improve the vehicle yaw stability more quickly and safely. In this paper, a new type of integrated EMBB has been designed, which mainly includes two parts: servo motor unit and hydraulic control unit. Aiming at the dynamic instability problem of intelligent unmanned vehicle, a three-layer vehicle yaw stability control structure including decision layer, distribution layer and execution layer is proposed based on integrated EMBB. Firstly, the decision layer calculates the ideal yaw rate and the side slip angle of the vehicle with the classic 2DOF vehicle dynamics model. The boundary of the stable region is determined by the phase plane method and the additional yaw moment is determined by the feedback PI control algorithm.

With rapid development of the automobile industry and the growing maturity of the automotive electronic technologies, the distributed-traction electric vehicle with four-wheel-distributed steering/braking/traction systems is regarded as an important development direction. With its unique chassis structure, it is the ideal benchmark platform used to evaluate active safety systems. The distributed-traction electric vehicle with four-wheel-distributed steering system is essentially full drive-by-wire vehicle. With its flexible chassis layout and high control degrees-of-freedom, the full drive-by-wire electric vehicle acted as a kind of redundant system is an ideal platform for the research of integrated control. In this treatise, the longitudinal dynamics of the electric vehicle as well as its lateral and yaw motions are controlled simultaneously.

The steer-by-wire (SBW) system, an integral component of the drive-by-wire chassis responsible for controlling the lateral motion of a vehicle, plays a pivotal role in enhancing vehicle safety. However, it poses a unique challenge concerning steering wheel return control, primarily due to its fundamental characteristic of severing the mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the turning wheel. This disconnect results in the inability to directly transmit the self-aligning torque to the steering wheel, giving rise to complications in ensuring a seamless return process. In order to realize precise control of steering wheel return, solving the problem of insufficient low-speed return and high-speed return overshoot of the steering wheel of the SBW system, this paper proposes a steering wheel active return control strategy for SBW system based on the backstepping control method.

Electric Power-Assisted Steering (EPAS) is a new power steering technology that will define the future of vehicle steering. The assist of EPAS is the function of the steering wheel torque and vehicle velocity. The assist characteristic of EPAS is set by control software, which is one of the key issues of EPAS. The straight-line type assist characteristic has been used in some current EPAS products, but its influence on the steering maneuverability and road feel hasn't been explicitly studied in theory. In this paper, the straight-line type assist characteristic is analyzed theoretically. Then a whole vehicle dynamic model used to study the straight-line type assist characteristic is built with ADAMS/Car and validated with DCF (Driver Control Files) mode of ADAMS/Car. Based on the whole vehicle dynamic model, the straight-line type assist characteristic's influence on the steering maneuverability and road feel is investigated.

In order to improve the tractive ability, steering capability and directional stability, etc. of automated mechanical transmission (AMT) vehicles running on the wet and slippery road, the anti-slip regulation (ASR) technologies for AMT vehicles are developed. The significance of ASR for AMT vehicles is introduced; a road friction recognition method based on the deceleration of driving wheels is investigated; a fuzzy anti-slip control system based on adjustment of engine torque is developed and the corresponding experimental verification is conducted. The experimental results denote that the proposed method is effective to eliminate the excessive slip when the AMT vehicle travels on the low friction road.