Unified Chassis Control of Electric Vehicles Considering Wheel Vertical Vibrations

Abstract

In the process of vehicle chassis electrification, different active actuators and systems have been developed and commercialized for improved vehicle dynamic performances. For a vehicle system with actuation redundancy, the integration of individual chassis control systems can provide additional benefits compared to a single ABS/ESC system. This paper describes a Unified Chassis Control (UCC) strategy for enhancing vehicle stability and ride comfort by the coordination of four In-Wheel Drive (IWD), 4-Wheel Independent Steering (4WIS), and Active Suspension Systems (ASS). Desired chassis motion is determined by generalized forces/moment calculated through a high-level sliding mode controller. Based on tire force constraints subject to allocated normal forces, the generalized forces/moment are distributed to the slip and slip angle of each tire by a fixed-point control allocation algorithm. Regarding the uneven road, H∞ robust controllers are proposed based on a modified quarter-car model. Evaluation of the overall system was accomplished by simulation testing with a full-vehicle CarSim model under different scenarios. The conclusion shows that the vertical vibration of the four wheels plays a detrimental role in vehicle stability, and the proposed method can effectively realize the tire force distribution to control the vehicle body attitude and driving stability even in high-demanding scenarios.

Assessment of the effect of passenger car wheel unbalance on driving comfort

“…To assess local vibration exposure (on the steering wheel), the vector sum of frequency-weighted rootmean-square (r.m.s) acceleration (vibration total value) ahvi and 8-hour vibration exposure is calculated according to [7,8,13]. For each measurement, the value of ahvi is calculated according to the relation (1):…”

“…On the other hand, in [1] the influence of wheel vibration on the process of integration of chassis control systems and stability of an electrically powered car was considered. Simulation studies [1] have shown that vertical wheel vibrations play a detrimental role in vehicle stability In [10], the impact of unbalanced masses for the basic and adjusted configuration on the frequency response was presented. In [16] the possibility of detecting wheel unbalance during road tests on various quality roads was presented.…”

Advanced Sensing and Control for Connected and Automated Vehicles

“…This Special Issue of Sensors aims at reporting on some of the recent research efforts on this increasingly important topic. The 12 accepted papers in this Issue cover vehicle position estimation [1], vehicle dynamic parameters estimation [2], cooperative collision warning systems [3], small object detection [4], impact identification of the driver's driving performance on executive control function [5], hybrid path planning for autonomous driving [6], trajectory tracking for autonomous driving [7], vehicle stability control [8], vehicle stability and ride comfort control [9], urban platooning protocol design for platoon [10], path planning algorithm for platooning [11], and self-driving architecture design for CAV platoon [12].…”

“…A Unified Chassis Control (UCC) strategy for enhancing vehicle stability and ride comfort by the coordination of four In-Wheel Drive (IWD), Four-Wheel Independent Steering (4WIS), and Active Suspension Systems (ASS) is designed in [9]. A hierarchical control structure was adopted to realize the UCC, including high-level sliding mode control, fixed point CA, and a normal tire force robust tracking controller.…”

“…In summary, there is a huge potential for CAV in collision avoidance, safety improvement and driving stability improvement. The papers gathered in this Special Issue contributed by proposing solutions to the general problem of state and/or parameter estimation [1][2][3], obstacle detection [4], driver behavior estimation [5], and/or classical academic problems such as path planning [6], path tracking [7], and stability control for autonomous driving [8,9] and/or by suggesting applications of the combined use of sensors and advanced algorithms to platooning [10][11][12], thus showing the theoretical challenges and practical interest of this research topic. Finally, we wish to thank the authors, reviewers, and journal staff for their commitment and effort, which made it possible to complete this Special Issue on time.…”