Research
The Influence of Electronic Stability Control, Active Suspension, Driveline and Front Steering Integrated System on the Vehicle Ride and Handling
The main aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of integration of vehicle dynamics control systems by proposing new control architecture to integrate the braking, steering, suspension and driveline. A 6 DoF nonlinear vehicle handling model is developed for in Matlab/Simulink. The modelling work contains linear suspensions with nonlinear tyres suitable for combined slip conditions. The results are validated against commercially available vehicle dynamics software. All the four active chassis control systems are evaluated over the entire range of vehicle handling region in standalone mode through simulation. Based on the analysis of these four standalone controllers, a novel rule based integration strategy is proposed to improve the vehicle handling. A comparison of the proposed integrated control strategy and the standalone control strategy is carried out and the results of the simulation are found to prove that the integrated control strategy improves vehicle stability across the entire vehicle operating region.
Epicyclic Power Split Transmissions for Hybrid Electric Vehicles: Fuel Consumption, Vehicle Performance and Driving Aggressiveness
This paper focuses on the improvement of fuel consumption, vehicle performance, and driving aggressiveness for Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) using epicyclic power split transmission (PST). In this paper, three and four branch transmission system models are analyzed and implemented into two HEVs. The modeling of the hybrid electric vehicle performance is carried using the QSS Toolkit. The models for the two vehicles are built based on the same baseline vehicle with the same vehicle parameters but with different transmissions. The vehicles are simulated over typical driving cycles; New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) and USA Federal Test Procedure FTP 75. The HEV results are also compared against a conventional IC engine plus manual gearbox vehicle. Computer programs for the analysis of epicyclic transmission based on a matrix method are developed and used. The simulations show that the 4 branch epicyclic offers substantial improvements of reduction in energy consumption, though the benefits are sensitive to the driving cycle used.
