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The Electro actuated Limited Slip Differential (e-LSD) can help increasing the dynamic features of the vehicle, but to implement a well designed control logic it is necessary a deep knowledge of the actual friction torque built up by the differential clutch. This work presents the development of such a control law that takes into account the wear depth progression. To carry out this task, an alternative method has been used to study the clutch discs engagement depending on the wear rate. The method takes advantages from a mixed approach with a numerical and an experimental part. Using a general purpose block-on-ring test bench, the tribologic analyses were performed following the ASTM G77 standard; thus, the friction coefficient has been investigated in the contact between discs with molybdenum treatment and steel alloy discs, as well as its variation depending on the wear rate.

The adoption of Electrical Power Steering (EPS) systems has greatly opened up the possibilities to control the steering wheel torque, which is a critical parameter in the subjective and objective evaluation of a new vehicle. Therefore, the tuning of the EPS controller is not only becoming increasing complicated, containing dozens of parameters and maps, but it is crucial in defining the basic DNA of the steering feeling characteristics. The largely subjective nature of the steering feeling assessment means that EPS tuning consists primarily of subjective tests on running prototypes. On account of that, this paper presents an alternative test bench for steering feeling simulation and evaluation. It combines a static driving simulator with a physical EPS assisted steering rack. The end goal is to more accurately reproduce the tactile feedback to the driver by including a physical hardware in lieu of complicated and difficult to obtain software models.