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A braking force distribution strategy in integrated braking system composed of the main braking system and the auxiliary braking system based on braking pad wear control and hitch force control under non-emergency braking condition is proposed based on the Electronically Controlled Braking System (EBS) to reduce the difference in braking pad wear between different axles and to decrease hitch force between tractors and trailers. The proposed strategy distributes the braking force based on the desired braking intensity, the degree of the braking pad wear and the limits of certain braking regulations to solve the coupling problems between braking safety, economical efficiency of braking and the comfort of drivers. Computer co-simulations of the proposed strategy are performed.

Inerters have become a hot topic in recent years, especially in vehicle, train, and building suspension systems. The performance of a passive inerter and a semi-active inerter was analyzed and compared with each other and it showed that the semi-active inerter has much better performance than the passive inerter, especially with the Hybrid control method. Eight different layouts of suspensions were analyzed with a quarter car model in this paper. The adaptation of dimensionless parameters was considered for a semi-active suspension and the semi-active inerters. The performance of the semi-active inerter suspensions with different layouts was compared with a semi-active suspension with a conventional parallel spring-damper arrangement. It shows a semi-active suspension, with more simple configuration and lower cost, has similar or better compromise between ride and handling than a semi-active inerter with the Hybrid control.

Taking a good longitudinal braking performance on flat and level road of tractor and semi-trailer combination as a target, in order to achieve an ideal braking force distribution among axles, while the vehicle deceleration is just depend on the driver's intention, not affected by the variation of semi-trailer mass, the paper proposes a model based vehicle mass identification and braking force distribution strategy. The strategy identifies the driver's braking intention via braking pedal, estimates semi-trailer's mass during the building process of braking pressure in brake chamber, distributes braking force among axles by using the estimated mass. And a double closed-loop regulation of the vehicle deceleration and utilization adhesion coefficient of each axle is presented, in order to eliminate the bad effect of mass estimation error, and enhance the robustness of the whole algorithm. A simulation is conducted by utilizing MATLAB/Simulink and TruckSim.

The earth's fossil energy is not limitless, and we should be taking advantage of the highly developed fields of science and technology to utilize it more efficiently and to create a fully environmentally friendly life. Considering the prodigious amount of vehicles in the world today, even a small improvement in their energy-saving performance could have a significant impact. In this paper, a new type of electro-hydraulic power steering (EHPS) system is described. It has two main advantages. First, it can significantly decrease the demand on the motor so that it can be used for a wider range of vehicles. Second, its pressure-flow characteristic can be programmed and is more flexible than hydraulic power steering (HPS) system. A prototype with a 500 W motor was applied to a truck with a front load of 2,700 kg, and static steer sweep tests were conducted to validate its feasibility.

Rollover accident of heavy vehicle during cornering is a serious road safety problem worldwide. In the past decade, based on the active intervention into the heavy vehicle roll dynamics method, researches have proposed effective anti-roll control schemes to guarantee roll stability during cornering. Among those studies, however, roll stability control strategies are generally derived independent of front steering control inputs, the interactive control characteristic between steering and anti-roll system have not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, a novel roll stability control structure that considers the interaction between steering and anti-roll system, is presented and discussed.

The EPS motor will be over-heated if large current lasts for a long time, which will decline the performance of EPS motor and even lead to irreparable damage. So the over-temperature protection control should be conducted in order to protect the components of EPS system, especially the durability of EPS motor. In this paper, the motor temperature was estimated according to the environmental temperature and the current of motor armature, and then the EPS assist current was limited based on the estimated temperature of motor to ensure that the EPS motor had a good working condition. So the over-temperature protection control for motor can be realized without increasing the EPS system components. Finally the control strategy for over-temperature protection was conducted in a vehicle with EPS system and its performance was verified.

In the performance evaluating of Electronic Brake System, conventional test methods have some inconvenience in existence. For example, the fixing of pressure sensors and wheel speed sensors is restrained by the installation position, and the precision of measuring is prone to be affected by the environment conditions. Since Electronic Brake System is featured by CAN (Controller Area Network) communication, special testing instrument can be connected with CAN bus, monitoring signals transmitting on the bus. This paper outlines the results of the study performed to analyze the application of CAN communication in the way of performance evaluation of Electronic Braking System.

This paper presents the study of chassis tuning of a commercial vehicle, which has a rear suspension with dual stage leaf spring assembly and a front suspension with double wishbone torsion bar. To balance the handling and ride performance of the vehicle, it is necessary to tune the key suspension parameters of the chassis including the dual stage stiffness of the leaf spring, the contact load of the leaf spring, the torsional rigidity of the torsion bar, the force curve of the front and rear dampers etc. The chassis tuning process of a physical commercial vehicle was first put forward. In the proposed flowchart, the kinematics and statics of front & rear suspensions were checked at the beginning of the tuning. Then the tire mechanical characteristics were tested by using a plate-type tire tester and the inertial parameters of the vehicle were indirectly measured. The K&C characteristics of front and rear suspensions were also tested and compared with the benchmark vehicle's.

The installation of the Electronic Braking System (EBS) could effectively improve braking response speed, shorten braking distance, and ensure driving safety of commercial vehicles. However, during longitudinal deceleration control process, the commercial vehicles face not only challenges such as large inertia mass and random road gradient resistance of the vehicle layer, but also non-linear characteristics of the EBS actuator layer. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes a commercial vehicle’s longitudinal deceleration precise control strategy considering vehicle-actuator dynamic characteristics. First, longitudinal dynamics of commercial vehicle is analyzed, and so is the EBS’ non-linear response hysteresis characteristics. Then, we design the dual layer deceleration control strategy. In vehicle layer, the recursive least squares with forgetting factor and Kalman filtering are comprehensively applied to dynamically estimate the vehicle mass and driving road slope.

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.

In this paper, we focus on the active vehicular suspension controller design. A quarter-vehicle suspension system is employed in the system analysis and synthesis. Due to the difficulty and cost in the measuring of all the states, we only choose two variables to construct the feedback loop, that is, the control law is a static-output-feedback (SOF) control. However, the sensor reduction would induce challenges in the controller design. One of the main challenges is the NP-hard problem in the corresponding SOF controller design. In order to deal with this challenge, we propose a two-stage design method in which a state-feedback controller is firstly designed and then the state-feedback controller is used to decouple the nonlinear conditions. To better compensate for the varying vehicle load, a robust load-dependent control strategy is adopted. The proposed design methodology is applied to a suspension control example.

Electronic braking system (EBS) of commercial vehicle is developed based on Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), for the purpose of enhancing the braking performance. Based on the previous study, this paper aims at the development and research on the control strategy of advanced electronic braking system for commercial vehicle, which mainly includes braking force distribution and multiple targets control strategy. In the study of braking force distribution control strategy, the mass of vehicle and the axle loads will be calculated dynamically and the braking force of each wheel will be distributed regarding to the axle loads. The braking intention recognition takes the brake pad wear into account when braking uncritically, so it can detect a difference in the pads between the front and the rear axles. The brake assist strategy supports the driver during emergency braking and the braking distance is shortened by the reduction of the braking system response time.

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.

Pneumatic Electric Braking System (EBS) is getting widely spread for commercial vehicles. Pneumatic EBS improves the problem of slow response of traditional pneumatic braking system by implementing brake-by-wire. However, the time-delay response and hysteresis of some electro-pneumatic components and some other issues decrease the response and control accuracy of the pneumatic EBS.

This article focuses on the research of control algorithm and control logic for the pneumatic EBS (Electronic Braking System) of commercial vehicle. An overall technical program was proposed which develops conventional braking and emergency braking for commercial vehicle EBS. According to the overall scheme, the methods of vehicle state estimation and driver's braking intention were determined, modeling and simulation for key components of commercial vehicle EBS were then carried out. This lead to the development of deceleration control, braking force distribution, brake assist and ABS control. Simulation models for key components of EBS and control strategy were validated through hardware-in-the-loop simulation tests. Simulation results show that the control strategy improves vehicle braking stability and vehicle active safety.

Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) has a wide range of applications in the military, agriculture, firefighting and other fields. Path planning, as a key aspect of autonomous driving technology, plays an essential role for UGV to accomplish the established driving tasks. At present, there are many global path planning algorithms in grid maps on unstructured roads, while general grid maps do not consider the specific elevation or ground type difference of each grid, and unstructured roads are generally considered as flat and open roads. On the contrary, the unmanned off-road is always a bumpy road with undulating terrain, and meanwhile, the landform is complex and the types of features are diverse. In order to ensure the safety and improve the efficiency of autonomous driving of UGV in off-road environment, this paper proposes a global off-road path planning method for UGV based on the raw image of remote sensing map. Firstly, the raw image is gridded.

In order to improve the handling and stability of a light bus at high speed, a virtual model was established in Adams-Car and its anti-roll bar and bushing parameters were virtually optimized. The tyre mechanical characteristics were firstly tested by using a plate-type tyre tester and the Magic Formula parameters of the tyre were obtained. Then the virtual bus model's handling performance were studied by the simulation of central steering test and steady static circular test. An optimal matching method was put forward. By using genetic algorithm to conduct optimization, the optimised parameters were obtained. After that the anti-roll bar and bushing samples were respectively manufactured. At last, the comparative trials were performed in an automotive proving ground, and the subjective evaluation of the light bus's handling and stability was taken by three specialized assessors.

Generally, noise will occur during steering with the hydraulic power steering system (hereinafter HPS). The noise producing in the rotary valve takes up a big proportion of the total one. To study the noise in the control valve, 2-D meshes of the flow field between the sleeve and the rotor were set up and a general CFD code-Fluent was used to analyze the flow inside the valve. The areas where the noise may be occurred were shown and some suggestions to silence the noise were given.

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.

This paper presented one calculation method of the contact load, which is the load acted on the spring at the moment when the second-level stiffness of the spring just begins to work. In the proposed method, the contact load calculation mainly based on the dynamic load of the unsprung mass and the road grades and the commonly driving speed were also considered. A semiempirical formula of the contact load was put forward. Then the contact load of the commercial bus's rear suspension was respectively calculated by using the proposed formula and traditional methods(geometric mean method and average load method) to compare each other and to verify the new method. Later, the spring samples were respectively manufactured based on the calculation results. At last, the validation tests were respectively performed in an automotive proving ground.