Disturbance Observer Based Control for Four Wheel Steering Vehicles With Model Reference

This paper presents a disturbance observer based control strategy for four wheel steering systems in order to improve vehicle handling stability. By combination of feedforward control and feedback control, the front and rear wheel steering angles are controlled simultaneously to follow both the desired sideslip angle and the yaw rate of the reference vehicle model.A nonlinear three degree-of-freedom four wheel steering vehicle model containing lateral, yaw and roll motions is built up, which also takes the dynamic effects of crosswind into consideration.The disturbance observer based control method is provided to cope with ignored nonlinear dynamics and to handle exogenous disturbances. Finally, a simulation experiment is carried out,which shows that the proposed four wheel steering vehicle can guarantee handling stability and present strong robustness against external disturbances.

Development and experimental validation of an automatic parking brake system with less driveline sensor

Electrical Parking Brake(EPB) has been popularly used in passenger cars over the past ten years. With the help of the several kinds of sensors mounted in driveline for the total traction force estimation, EPB can obtain well performance on drive-off assistance and automatic parking brake. Furthermore, its AUTOHOLD function can realize automatic parking brake and ease the driver. However, given that the higher cost and complexity of this traction force estimation method based on the driveline sensors and its slower response resulted by applying maximum parking force for safety parking while driving off, a novel automatic parking brake system without these transmission system sensors, such as clutch position sensor for the cars with manual transmission, is proposed in this paper, including its control scheme and application test. Firstly, the indirect judgement method of the appropriate moment to release the parking brake, which is based on the car pitch moment when it drives off, is introduced according to the force analysis when the car is ready to go. Then a pragmatic mass estimation method for proper brake force calculation is proposed for improving the drive-off performance. In addition, for the convenience and drivability of skillful driver, as well as the system reliability, a mechanical redundant design to reserve the conventional handbrake lever is also described. Finally, various simulations based on CarSim software and road tests are performed to validate its effectiveness.

Ripple-based matrix modeling and cross-coupling effect analysis of double-input DC-DC Boost converters

This paper deals with the modeling and cross-coupling effect analysis in double-input Boost converters with multiplex current control. A ripple-based multiplex current controlled matrix model is proposed to restore the system's high-frequency domain dynamics information and resolve the coexistence problem of the sample-and-hold effect in multiplex current controllers, which significantly improves the resolution of the conventional average model. Based on the proposed model, both sub-harmonic and low-frequency oscillations are identified in terms of stability analysis, and the inherent mechanism of these complicated nonlinear dynamic behavior is revealed, which not only illustrates the origin of the oscillations but also points out the dominant factors in diverse types of instability situation. Besides, cross-coupling effect analysis is performed to study the interaction between the input ports with the help of the Gershgorin band, and the mechanism of the special unbalanced oscillation phenomenon is revealed. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis approach is used to identify the key parameters with respect to the cross-coupling effect, which provides more design-oriented knowledge for practical engineering. In addition, the benefits of the proposed model are further illustrated through a comparative analysis. Finally, these theoretical results are verified by experimental ones. These results are beneficial to the improvement of performance as well as the understanding of the cross-coupling effect of multi-input converters.