Abstract: The handing and stability of the distributed electric drive vehicle are studied. The controller with hierarchical structure is developed based on model following control theory. The controller contains reference model, motion tracking controller, control allocator and parameter estimation. Vehicle model of two degree of freedom with the vehicle side slip angle limitation is used as reference model. The nonlinear motion-tracking controller with sliding mode control principle is designed. Control allocation is introduced to the over-actuated system. Quadratic programming method with active set solving is designed. The kinetic parameter estimation module is studied. The controller is tested under a real vehicle platform, the results of double lane changed experiment and slalom experiment show: the sliding mode controller has good convergence; the control allocator can achieve the optimal allocation of four longitudinal tire forces; the vehicle yaw rate could track the reference yaw rate well. Compares to the uncontrolled vehicle, the vehicle under control could have high average speed and high average yaw rate, which increases the vehicle stability under extreme conditions.

Key words: Control allocation, Electric vehicle, Quadratic programming, Real vehicle test, Sliding mode control