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This paper proposes a new evaluation method of analyzing stability and design of a controller for an electric power steering (EPS) system. The main purpose of the EPS system’s control design is to ensure a comfortable driving experience of drivers, which mainly depends on the assist torque map. However, the high level of assist gain and its nonlinearity may cause oscillation, divergence and instability to the steering systems. Therefore, an EPS system needs to have an extra stability controller to eliminate the side effect of assist gain on system stability and attenuate the unpleasant vibration. In this paper, an accurate theoretical model is built and the method for evaluating system quality are suggested. The bench tests and vehicle experiments are carried out to verify the theoretical analysis.

Automobile rubber isolator was subjected to random load cycle for a long time in the service process, and its main rubber material for vibration isolation was prone to fatigue failure. Since the traditional Miner damage theory overlooked the load randomness, it had a prediction error problem. In order to improve the prediction accuracy of rubber fatigue life, the traditional Miner damage theory was modified by random uncertainty theory to predict the rubber fatigue life under random load. Firstly, the rubber dumbbell-shaped test column, which was vulcanized from rubber materials commonly used in vibration isolators, was taken as the research object. The uniaxial fatigue test of rubber under different strain amplitudes and strain mean values was carried out. Then the fatigue characteristic curve of rubber with equivalent strain amplitude as the damage parameter was established.

The durability road test of a vehicle is an important test to verify the reliability of vehicle components. In order to carry out the durability bench test for drive shaft systems of all-terrain vehicles, a method for acquiring time domain signals of articulation angles of the CVJ, input torque, and rotational speeds of drive shaft systems is proposed. The acquired load spectrum of drive shaft systems is preprocessed including deleting small amplitudes, de-drifting, deburring, filtering, etc. Peaks and valleys are extracted from the preprocessed load spectrum. Based on the graphic method and the estimator stabilization method, the upper and lower thresholds of the time domain extrapolation of the load spectrum are determined, and then the peaks and valleys excesses that exceed the upper and lower thresholds are extracted. The generalized pareto distribution function is used to fit the distribution of peaks and valleys excesses.

Because the power unit of electric vehicle has large torque, the rubber mount of electric vehicle is fully compressed under the condition of full throttle acceleration. When designing the mount of electric vehicle, the dynamic-to-static stiffness ratio of mount under the case should be as low as possible to improve the vibration isolation rate of the mount. In this paper, a method for calculating the high frequency dynamic characteristics of rubber isolators under different preloads is presented. Firstly, the dynamic characteristics of rubber specimens under various shear pre-strains were tested. The test results show that the dynamic stiffness of specimen decreases at first and then increases with the increase of shear strain. The viscoelastic parameters of rubber in frequency domain under different pre-strain were identified according to the experimental data. Secondly, a finite element modeling method was proposed.

Tortuosity, viscous characteristic length and thermal characteristic length are three important parameters for estimating the acoustic performance of porous materials, and it is usually measured by ultrasonic measurement technology, which is costly. In this paper, a method for identifying the tortuosity, viscous characteristic length and thermal characteristic length for the porous fiber materials mixed with kapok fiber and two kinds of other fiber materials is proposed. The tortuosity is calculated by using the porosity and high-frequency normal sound absorption coefficient of porous materials. According to the normal sound absorption coefficient curve of porous materials under plane wave incidence, viscous characteristic length and thermal characteristic length are identified through the Johnson-Champoux-Allard-Lafarge (JCAL) model and genetic algorithm by using the measured parameters, the calculated tortuosity and static thermal permeability.

Rubber isolators are widely used under random vibrations. In order to predict their fatigue life, a study on the fatigue analysis methodology for rubber isolators is carried out in this paper. Firstly, taking a mount used for isolating air conditioning compressor vibrations as studying example, accelerations versus time of rubber isolator at both sides are acquired for a car under different running conditions. The acceleration in time domain is transformed to frequency domain using the Fourier transform, and the acceleration power spectral density (PSD) is the obtained. Using the PSD as input, fatigue test is carried for the rubber isolator in different temperature and constant humidity conditions. A finite element model of the rubber isolator using ABAQUS is established for estimating fatigue life, and model validity is verified through static characteristic testing. Dynamic responses of the rubber isolator at frequency domain are calculated if a unit load is applied.

A fourth-order mathematical model for I-EHB (integrated electro-hydraulic brake) system was derived from its mechanical and hydraulic subsystems. The model was linearized at equilibrium state and then was verified by AMESIM software. The friction model of the system was analyzed based on static friction and viscous friction. A bench test was designed to identify the parameters of friction model. As the I-EHB system worked at different braking conditions, a PID-based switching controller was designed to track the target servo cylinder pressure. Both simulations and experiments results showed that, the response time of pressure was less than 120ms, and there was no overshoot, which helped handling different braking conditions and improving the braking safety and comfort.

In order to enhance the efficiency of durability testing of automobile parts, a time-frequency domain accelerated editing method of road load time series of rubber mount on powertrain was discussed. Based on Stockwell Transform method and Accumulative Power Spectral Density, a new time-frequency domain accelerated editing method (ST-APSD) was proposed. The accumulative power spectral density was obtained by ST of the load time series signal of automobile powertrain rubber mounting force which is acquired by the real vehicle in the test field. Based on the accumulative power spectral density, the threshold value was proposed to identify and delete the small damage load fragments, and then the acceleration spectrum was obtained.

Sliding mode control with a disturbance observer (SMC-DO) is proposed for suppressing the sprung mass vibration in a quarter-car with double-wishbone active suspension system (ASS), which contains the geometry structure of the upper and lower control arms. The governing equations of double-wishbone ASS are obtained by the balance-force analysis of the sprung mass in ASS. Considering uncertainties in damping, stiffness, and external disturbance acting on the sprung mass, we design a disturbance observer based on a sliding mode control (SMC) to estimate these uncertainties under the unknown road excitation. By the Lyapunov minimax approach, the uniform boundedness and the uniform ultimate boundedness of ASS with the proposed control are rigorously proved. Through co-simulation of ADAMS software and MATLAB/Simulink software, the sprung mass acceleration of ASS can be obtained with and without the proposed control.

A road test on semi-trailers is carried out, and accelerations of some characteristic points on the braking system,axles,and truck body is measured,also brake pressure and noise around the support frame is acquired.The measured data was analyzed to determine the causes of the brake noise, and the mechanism of the noise of the drum brake of semi-trailers during low-speed braking was investigated. The following conclusions are obtained: (1) Brake noise of the drum brake of the semi-trailer at low-frequency is generated from vibrations of the brake shoes, axle, and body, and the vibration frequency is close to 2nd natural frequency of the axle. (2) Brake noise is generated from stick-slip motion between the brake shoes and the brake drum, where the relative motion between the brake drum and the brake shoes is changed alternately with sliding and sticking, resulting in sudden changes in acceleration and shock vibration.

The automatic tensioner is an important component of the engine front end accessory drive system (EFEADS). It maintains the tension of the belt steadily and reduces the slip of pulley, which is benefit for improving the life of V-ribbed belt. In this paper, an EFEADS model is established which is considering with the hysteretic behavior and the asymmetry of friction damping of a tensioner. A four-pulley EFEADS is taken as a study subject. The dynamic responses of system, such as the oscillation angle of each pulley, the slip factor of pulley, the oscillation of tensioner arm and the dynamic belt tension are analyzed with symmetric damping and asymmetric damping tensioner. Meanwhile, the influence of asymmetric damping factors of tensioner on the dynamic response of EFEADS is also investigated.

This paper presents an adaptive H2/H∞ control strategy for a semi-active suspension system with unknown suspension parameters. The proposed strategy takes into account the damping force characteristics of continuous damping control (CDC) damper. Initially, the external characteristics of CDC damper were measured, and a forward model and a back propagation (BP) neural network inverse model of CDC damper were proposed using the measured data. Subsequently, a seven-degree-of-freedom vehicle with semi-active suspension system and H2/H∞ controller was designed. Multiple feedback control matrices corresponding to different sprung mass parameter values were determined by analyzing time and frequency domain performance. Finally, a dual observer system combining suspension state and parameter estimation based on the Kalman filter algorithm was established.

The thermal management system, which is used to improve driving safety and thermal comfort, is one of the most important systems in electric vehicles. In recent years, researchers have coupled the heat pump system and the battery cooling system to effectively improve the heating COP (Coefficient of Performance). Therefore an accurate dynamic model of thermal management system plays a key role in investigating system performance and optimal control strategies. In this paper, an electric vehicle thermal management system based on four-way valve heat pump system is designed. The moving boundary method is improved by considering the unsteady flow of the external fluid, and then a 13-order dynamic model of the thermal management system is established. Firstly, the control equations of evaporator, condenser and chiller are derived according to the principle of conservation, and then a dynamic model of thermal management system is established in Simulink.

This paper designs the important components and structure of the integrated electro-hydraulic brake system (I-EHB). Firstly, the simplified linear system is modeled, and the transfer function without considering the nonlinear disturbance such as system friction is derived, and the correctness of the linear system is preliminarily verified by AMESim. Then set up the I-EHB system test bench, and use the Stribeck friction model to identify the friction torque parameters in the static and kinetic friction stages of the system to obtain a more accurate friction model. Finally, based on the I-EHB system model of friction disturbance, a pressure-speed-current three-loop cascade PID controller is designed, and a feedforward controller based on the system model is added to form the control structure of “pressure feedforward compensation + pressure-speed-current closed-loop cascade PID”.

The fatigue prediction model of an air spring based on the crack initiation method is established in this study. Taking a rolling lobe air spring with an aluminum casing as the studying example, a finite element model for analyzing force versus displacement is developed. The static stiffness and dimensional parameters of limit positions are calculated and analyzed. The influence of different modeling methods of air springs bellow are compared and analyzed. Static stiffness measurement of an air spring is conducted, and the calculation results and the measured results of the static stiffness are compared. It is shown that the relative error of the measured stiffness and calculated stiffness is within 1%. The Abaqus post-processing stage is redeveloped in Python language.

Uniaxial fatigue tests of rubber dumbbell specimens under different mean and amplitude of strain are carried out. An Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) model optimized by Dragonfly Algorithm (DA) is proposed to predict the fatigue life of rubber based on measured rubber fatigue life data. Mean and amplitude of strain and measured rubber fatigue life are taken as input variables and output variables respectively in DA-ELM model. For comparison, genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are used to optimize ELM parameters, and GA-ELM and PSO-ELM models are established. The comparison results show that DA-ELM model performs better in predicting the fatigue life of rubber with least dispersion. The coefficients of determination for the training set and test set are 99.47% and 99.12%, respectively. In addition, a life prediction model equivalent strain amplitude as damage parameter is introduced to further highlight the superiority of DA-ELM model.

An experiment is carried out to measure creep groan of a drum brake located in a trailer axle of a truck. The noise nearby the drum brake and accelerations on brake shoes, axle and trailer frame are collected to analyze the occurring conditions and characteristics of the creep groan. A multi-body dynamics model with 1/4 trailer chassis structures is established for analyzing brake component vibrations that generates the creep groan. In the model, the contact force between brake cam and brake shoes, the contact friction characteristics between brake linings and inner circular surface of brake drum, and the properties of chassis structure are included. Dynamic responses of brake shoes, axle and trailer frame during the braking process are estimated using the established model and the responses are compared with the measured results, which validate the model.

The tensioner of the engine front end accessory drive system was taken as a study object, and the mechanical structure and working principle of the automatic tensioner were analyzed. The hysteresis behavior test of tensioner torque-angular displacement was carried out, and the effects of different excitation frequencies and excitation amplitudes on the hysteresis behavior of the tensioner were analyzed. According to the modified Dahl hysteresis model, the model parameters of the tensioner was identified. Based on the identified model parameters, the hysteresis behavior of the tensioner was calculated, and the calculation model accuracy was verified with the tested results. The influence of the hysteresis curve transition area exponent on the tensioner behavior was studied. The dynamic behavior of the engine front end accessory drive system was simulated using the simulation software.

In order to study the effects of different factors on the static and dynamic characteristics of air springs, three models were established to calculate the static and dynamic characteristics of air springs, including modeling at the design position, modeling only considering the straight state, and modeling considering the thickness of the bellows in the straight state. Static stiffness of air springs is calculated using three different models and are compared with experiments. In the straight state model considering the thickness of the bellow, the influence of aluminum tube and bellows thickness on the static stiffness are considered, and the modeling with the straight state solved the problem of the change in cord angle after the air spring was inflated and expanded. The established model is then used to calculate static and dynamic characteristics of air springs, such as static stiffness, hysteresis loop, and dynamic stiffness.

With the development of light weight design and the high power output of an engine, and since the damping of rubber materials is relatively low, the effectiveness of torsional vibration (TV) control for an engine crankshaft with an ordinary Single Mode and rubber-damped TV Absorber (SMTVA) is limited. Here, a SMTVA references to a TVA with only one inertial mass. In this paper, the configurations of some Multi-Mode and rubber-damped TV Absorbers (MMTVA) having more than one inertial mass are introduced firstly, then a detailed procedure for modeling a torsional vibration system for a generic crankshaft system is presented. Thirdly, an optimization method for determining the design parameters of a MMTVA (mass ratios, frequency ratios and damping ratios) is developed. The proposed calculation method is based on reducing the torsional vibration of a crankshaft. An example is given for demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method and the MMTVA in reducing the TV of a crankshaft.