Modelling and control of the braking system of the electric Polaris Ranger all-terrain-vehicle

I mezzi ATV sono impiegati in attività forestali, di sorveglianza e soccorso. Si è vista recentemente la nascita di ATV elettrici, sinonimo di pulizia e risparmio. La possibilità di rendere questi veicoli completamente autonomi ha stimolato l'interesse del settore automotive. L' ABS in particolare, che finora è diffusa solo tra i veicoli stradali è stata introdotta e studiata. Modelli matematici per la simulazione dell'impianto frenante sono stati derivati, come base per il futuroope

MODELING AND SIMULATION OF PM MOTOR TESTING ENVIRONMENT TOWARDS EV APPLICATION CONSIDERING ROAD CONDITIONS

The electric vehicle (EV) performance testing is an indispensable aspect of the design study and marketing of electric vehicle. The development of a suitable electric motor testing environment for EVs is very significant. On the one hand, it provides a relatively realistic testing environment for the study of the key technologies of electric vehicles, and it also plays an essential role in finding a reasonable and reliable optimization scheme. On the other hand, it provides a reference to the evaluation criteria for the products on the market. This thesis is based on such requirements to model and simulate the PM motor testing environment towards EV applications considering road conditions. Firstly, the requirements of the electric motor drive as a propulsion system for EV applications are investigated by comparing to that of the traditional engine as a propulsion system. Then, as the studying objective of this work, the mathematical model of PMSM is discussed according to three different coordinate systems, and the control strategy for EV application is developed. In order to test the PM motor in the context of an EV, a specific target vehicle model is needed as the virtual load of the tested motor with the dyno system to emulate the real operating environment of the vehicle. A slippery road is one of the severe driving conditions for EVs and should be considered during the traction motor testing process. Fuzzy logic based wheel slip control is adopted in this thesis to evaluate the PM motor performance under slippery road conditions. Through the proposed testing environment, the PM motor can be tested in virtual vehicle driving conditions, which is significant for improving the PM motor design and control

Stability Control of Electric Vehicles with In-wheel Motors

Recently, mostly due to global warming concerns and high oil prices, electric vehicles have attracted a great deal of interest as an elegant solution to environmental and energy problems. In addition to the fact that electric vehicles have no tailpipe emissions and are more efficient than internal combustion engine vehicles, they represent more versatile platforms on which to apply advanced motion control techniques, since motor torque and speed can be generated and controlled quickly and precisely. The chassis control systems developed today are distinguished by the way the individual subsystems work in order to provide vehicle stability and control. However, the optimum driving dynamics can only be achieved when the tire forces on all wheels and in all three directions can be influenced and controlled precisely. This level of control requires that the vehicle is equipped with various chassis control systems that are integrated and networked together. Drive-by-wire electric vehicles with in-wheel motors provide the ideal platform for developing the required control system in such a situation. The focus of this thesis is to develop effective control strategies to improve driving dynamics and safety based on the philosophy of individually monitoring and controlling the tire forces on each wheel. A two-passenger electric all-wheel-drive urban vehicle (AUTO21EV) with four direct-drive in-wheel motors and an active steering system is designed and developed in this work. Based on this platform, an advanced fuzzy slip control system, a genetic fuzzy yaw moment controller, an advanced torque vectoring controller, and a genetic fuzzy active steering controller are developed, and the performance and effectiveness of each is evaluated using some standard test maneuvers. Finally, these control systems are integrated with each other by taking advantage of the strengths of each chassis control system and by distributing the required control effort between the in-wheel motors and the active steering system. The performance and effectiveness of the integrated control approach is evaluated and compared to the individual stability control systems, again based on some predefined standard test maneuvers

Integration of Active Chassis Control Systems for Improved Vehicle Handling Performance

This thesis investigates the principle of integration of vehicle dynamics control systems by proposing a novel control architecture to integrate the brake-based electronic stability control (ESC), active front steering (AFS), normal suspension force control (NFC) and variable torque distribution (VTD). A nonlinear 14 degree of freedom passive vehicle dynamics model was developed in Matlab/Simulink and validated against commercially available vehicle dynamics software CarSim. Dynamics of the four active vehicle control systems were developed. Fuzzy logic and PID control strategies were employed considering their robustness and effectiveness in controlling nonlinear systems. Effectiveness of active systems in extending the vehicle operating range against the passive ones was investigated. From the research, it was observed that AFS is effective in improving the stability at lower lateral acceleration (latac) region with less interference to the longitudinal vehicle dynamics. But its ability diminishes at higher latac regions due to tyre lateral force saturation. Both ESC and VTD are found to be effective in stabilising the vehicle over the entire operating region. But the intrusive nature of ESC promotes VTD as a preferred stability control mechanism at the medium latac range. But ESC stands out in improving stability at limits where safety is of paramount importance. NFC is observed to improve the ability to generate the tyre forces across the entire operating range. Based on this analysis, a novel rule based integrated chassis control (ICC) strategy is proposed. It uses a latac based stability criterion to assign the authority to control the stability and ensures the smooth transition of the control authority amongst the three systems, AFS, VTD and ESC respectively. The ICC also optimises the utilisation of NFC to improve the vehicle handling performance further, across the entire operating regions. The results of the simulation are found to prove that the integrated control strategy improves vehicle stability across the entire vehicle operating region

Model-based powertrain design and control system development for the ideal all-wheel drive electric vehicle

The transfer case based all-wheel drive electric vehicle (TCAWDEV) and dual-axle AWDEV have been investigated to balance concerns about energy consumption, drivability and stability of vehicles. However, the mentioned powertrain architectures have the torque windup issue or the wheel skidding issue. The torque windup is an inherent issue of mechanical linked all-wheel drive systems. The hydraulic motor-based or the electric motor-based ideal all-wheel drive powertrain can provide feasible solutions to the mentioned issues. An ideal AWDEV (IAWDEV) powertrain architecture and its control schemes were proposed by this research; the architecture has four independent driving motors in powertrain. The IAWDEV gives more control freedoms to implement active torque controls and traction mode controls. In essence, this research came up with the distributed powertrain concept, and developed control schemes of the distributed powertrain to replace the transfer case and differential devices. The study investigated the dual-loop motor control, the hybrid sliding mode control (HSMC) and the neural network predictive control to reduce energy consumption and achieve better drivability and stability by optimizing the torque allocation of each dependent wheel. The mentioned control schemes were respectively developed for the anti-slip, differential and yaw stability functionalities of the IAWDEV powertrain. This study also investigated the sizing method that the battery capacity was estimated by using cruise performance at 3% road grade. In addition, the model-based verification was employed to evaluate the proposed powertrain design and control schemes. The verification shows that the design and controls can fulfill drivability requirements and minimize the existing issues, including torque windup and chattering of the slipping wheel. In addition, the verification shows that the IAWDEV can harvest around two times more energy while the vehicle is running on slippery roads than the TCAWDEV and the dual-axle AWDEV; the traction control can achieve better drivability and lower energy consumption than mentioned powertrains; the mode control can reduce 3% of battery charge depleting during the highway driving test. It also provides compelling evidences that the functionalities achieved by complicated and costly mechanical devices can be carried out by control schemes of the IAWDEV; the active torque controls can solve the inherent issues of mechanical linked powertrains; the sizing method is credible to estimate the operation envelop of powertrain components, even though there is some controllable over-sizing

Experimental and numerical approach to investigate tire and ABS combined influence on wet braking performance of passenger cars.

This PhD activity is mainly focused on the study of the emergency braking test, where the tire behaviour can be influenced by the ABS system during such manoeuvre on wet roads. The main goal is to investigate and optimize the optimal shape of the longitudinal force characteristics of the tire in order to reduce the braking distance. The only evaluation of the μ-peak could not be sufficient for reliable assessments but the whole shape of the longitudinal curve should be considered. Nowadays, the Wet Grip Index (WGI) is the parameter with which it is possible to classify the quality of a tire in wet conditions in the EU tire label and it is mainly based on maximum grip that a tire can perform interacting with the wet road. Understanding the optimal shape of the curve could also mean to understand if the WGI approach can give a complete evaluation of tire performance during the braking, or there could be something more to take into account. A numerical approach was considered and a ABS logic has been modelled with the aim to replicate the fundamental strategies of a passenger car. A half vehicle model has been considered for this research work. A more physical approach on ABS modelling is proposed in this thesis, with the aim to estimate the optimal working range of the logic without any pre-set information. Regarding the implemented tire model, the focuses were on trying to find a method to characterize the tire in wet conditions and understand how the longitudinal relaxation length can influence the ABS work in simulation environment. A method is proposed to get a possible estimation of the longitudinal relaxation length of the tire from vehicle measurements. Moreover, a study about the relaxation length evaluation with respect to the excitation frequency coming from the longitudinal slippage will be described in this thesis. The emergency braking model was used to optimize the reference curve in order to reduce the braking distance. The analysis is focused on three parameters that can identify the longitudinal characteristics of the tire: the braking stiffness, μ-peak and drop down of the grip after the peak condition. The main outcome of the simulation results shows that the μ-peak could not be considered as the only critical parameter to evaluate the braking performance of the tire and that the drop-down of the grip seems to play a very important role to reduce braking distances

Development of an Electronic Stability Control for Improved Vehicle Handling using Co-Simulation

The research project focuses on integrating the algorithms of recent automotive Electronic Stability Control (ESC) technologies into a commercial multi-body dynamics (MBD) software for full vehicle simulations. Among various control strategies for ESC, the sliding mode control (SMC) method is proposed to develop these algorithms, as it is proven to be excellent at overcoming the effect of uncertainties and disturbances. The ESC model integrates active front steering (AFS) system and direct yaw moment control (DYC) system, using differential braking system, therefore the type of the ESC model is called as integrated vehicle dynamic control (IVDC) system. The IVDC virtual model will be designed using a specialized control system software, called Simulink. The controller model will be used to perform full vehicle simulations, such as sine with dwell (SwD) and double lane change (DLC) tests on Simulink to observe its functionality in stabilizing vehicles. The virtual nonlinear full vehicle model in CarSim will be equipped with the IVDC virtual model to ensure that the proposed IVDC virtual model passes the regulations that describes the ESC homologation process for North America and European countries, each defined by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and United Nations (UN). The proposed research project will enable automotive engineers and researchers to perform full vehicle virtual simulations with ESC capabilities

Integrated vehicle dynamics control using active steering, driveline and braking

This thesis investigates the principle of integrated vehicle dynamics control through proposing a new control configuration to coordinate active steering subsystems and dynamic stability control (DSC) subsystems. The active steering subsystems include Active Front Steering (AFS) and Active Rear Steering (ARS); the dynamic stability control subsystems include driveline based, brake based and driveline plus brake based DSC subsystems. A nonlinear vehicle handling model is developed for this study, incorporating the load transfer effects and nonlinear tyre characteristics. This model consists of 8 degrees of freedom that include longitudinal, lateral and yaw motions of the vehicle and body roll motion relative to the chassis about the roll axis as well as the rotational dynamics of four wheels. The lateral vehicle dynamics are analysed for the entire handling region and two distinct control objectives are defined, i.e. steerability and stability which correspond to yaw rate tracking and sideslip motion bounding, respectively. Active steering subsystem controllers and dynamic stability subsystem controller are designed by using the Sliding Mode Control (SMC) technique and phase-plane method, respectively. The former is used as the steerability controller to track the reference yaw rate and the latter serves as the stability controller to bound the sideslip motion of the vehicle. Both stand-alone controllers are evaluated over a range of different handling regimes. The stand-alone steerability controllers are found to be very effective in improving vehicle steering response up to the handling limit and the stand-alone stability controller is found to be capable of performing the task of maintaining vehicle stability at the operating points where the active steering subsystems cannot. Based on the two independently developed stand-alone controllers, a novel rule based integration scheme for AFS and driveline plus brake based DSC is proposed to optimise the overall vehicle performance by minimising interactions between the two subsystems and extending functionalities of individual subsystems. The proposed integrated control system is assessed by comparing it to corresponding combined control. Through the simulation work conducted under critical driving conditions, the proposed integrated control system is found to lead to a trade-off between stability and limit steerability, improved vehicle stability and reduced influence on the longitudinal vehicle dynamics

Self Tuning PID Control Of Antilock Braking System Using Electronic Wedge Brake

This paper describes the design of an antilock braking system (ABS) control for a passenger vehicle that employs an electronic wedge brake (EWB). The system is based on a two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) vehicle dynamic traction model, with the EWB acting as the brake actuator. The developed control structure, known as the Self-Tuning PID controller, is made up of a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller that serves as the main feedback loop control and a fuzzy supervisory system that serves as a tuner for the PID controller gains. This control structure is generated through two structures, namely FPID and SFPID, where the difference between these two structures is based on the fuzzy input used. An ABS-based PI D controller and a fuzzy fractional PID controller developed in previous works were used as the benchmark, as well as the testing method, to evaluate the effectiveness of the controller structure. According to the results of the tests, the performance of the SFPID controller is better than that of other PID and FPID controllers, being 10% and 1% faster in terms of stopping time, 8% and 1% shorter in terms of stopping distance, 9% and 1% faster in terms of settling time, and 40% and 5% more efficient in reaching the target slip, respectively