Search Results

This paper presents an advanced control system, which integrates three fuzzy logic controllers namely; Direct Yaw-moment Control (DYC), Active Roll-moment Control (ARC) and Active Front Steering (AFS) to enhance vehicle cornering and overturning stability. Based on a well-developed and validated fourteen degree of freedom (DOF) full vehicle model with non-linear tire characteristics, a reference 3-DOF yaw-roll plane vehicle model is introduced to control yaw rate, sideslip angle, and roll angle of the vehicle body. The control actions of both direct yaw and active roll moments are performed by generating differential braking moments across the front wheels, while the control action of the active steering is performed by modifying the steering wheel angle. Different standard cornering tests are conducted in MATLAB / Simulink environment such as J-turn, fishhook and lane change maneuvers.

This paper presents an integrated experimental and simulation investigation which is conducted on a series hybrid electric vehicle. The mathematical model is simulated in two distinct environments; MATLAB/Simulink and GT-Suite. An experimental test rig is devised in order to measure the vehicle performance including wheeled-chassis dynamometer. Components consumed powers, vehicle speed, engine revolution, fuel consumption and consumed energies are all measured in real time and the results are used to verify the numerical modelling work. For optimizing the performance of the vehicle, a rule based control algorithm is proposed and applied to the model using Stateflow environment. Many sequential-decision logic-based rules are graphical coded to operate the internal combustions engine at its most fuel efficient modes.

This paper presents a six degree of freedom full vehicle model simulating the testing of heavy truck suspensions to evaluate the ride comfort and stability using actual characteristics of gas charged single tube shock absorbers. The model is developed using one of the commercial multi-body dynamics software packages, ADAMS. The model incorporates all sources of compliance: stiffness and damping with linear and non-linear characteristics. The front and the rear springs and dampers representing the suspension system were attached between the axles and the vehicle body. The front and the rear axles were attached to a wheel spindle assembly, which in turn was attached to the irregular drum wheel, simulating the road profile irregularities. As a result of the drum rotation, sudden vertical movements were induced in the vehicle suspension, due to the bumps and rebounds, thus simulating the road profile.

The rollover problem had a great concern in the last few years, where various mathematical models for vehicle rollover were developed. The main parameters that are essentials for assessment of vehicle rollover are suspension stiffness, shock absorber damping, and tire stiffness and damping in addition to vehicle weight and geometry. It is a difficult task to change these parameters during a real vehicle dynamic testing. Moreover, such dynamic test is almost a destructive one due to severity of rollover crashes [ 1 ]. Also, a real vehicle dynamic testing has many disadvantages which cannot be easily avoided such as the effect of driver behavior, the cost of instrumentation and equipment, time consumption, and effect of outriggers on the vehicle roll mass moment of inertia. In the present paper, the adoption of a scaled vehicle lab model (VLM) to study the effect of design parameters on vehicle rollover instead of destructive vehicle dynamic testing has shown its validity.

This paper presents a comprehensive testing of four different shock absorbers: three were passive and the other was readjust able to study their performance on vehicle ride and stability. For this purpose, a quarter vehicle model and a half vehicle model simulating vehicle suspension testing were devolved in non-dimensional form to study the effect of actual characteristics of shock absorbers on vehicle performance. The shock absorber characteristics were represented by the linear average value of shock absorber (both rebound and compression strokes), the linear rebound, and the compression strokes with different slopes and actual measurements characteristics. Also, a parametric study was carried out to study the effect of mass ratio and stiffness ratio on the vehicle performance. The mass ratio was defined as the ratio of the unsprung mass to the sprung mass while the stiffness ratio, was defined as the ratio of spring stiffness to tire stiffness.