Integrated Longitudinal and Vertical Motion Control Framework for Distributed Drive Electric Vehicles

doi:10.3901/JME.2025.04.239

Abstract

Abstract: The distributed drive electric vehicles endow a more flexible and modular control mode. However, in complex urban traffic scenarios, the frequent acceleration and deceleration of vehicles poses a great challenge to the longitudinal-vertical motion control of the vehicle. To this end, the aims to use the integration of torque vector control and active suspension system to improve the longitudinal and vertical comprehensive motion performance of distributed drive electric vehicles. Firstly, a half-vehicle dynamic model is constructed for straight driving conditions. Considering the nonlinear characteristics of the tire, the equivalent tire cornering stiffness is solved in real time by fitting the tire force. On this basis, the linear parameter time-varying model is introduced to solve the problem of system uncertainty caused by vehicle speed and cornering stiffness, thus reducing the computational burden of the algorithm optimization process. Secondly, model predictive control is used to control vehicle safety, energy saving and comfort. The tire slip rate, motor efficiency, actuator energy consumption and vehicle vertical motion are optimized as objective functions. The controller solving process derives the hard constraints that meet the multi-performance requirements of the system. To value the effectiveness of the proposed controller, a rapid control prototype platform is established through the real-time simulator. The Economic Commission for Europe is applied as the test condition. The results show that the controller can effectively guarantee the vehicle safety while improving the emerging-saving and comfort. As for the successive acceleration behavior in the straight-ahead driving condition, the maximum tire slip ratio with the proposed controller can be approximately reduced by 24% compared to the linear quadratic regulator. The efficiency of the in-wheel motor is higher than 88%. In addition, the vehicle vertical dynamics performance can also be guaranteed. The maximum vertical displacement of the vehicle center of gravity is reduced about 0.02 m compared to the linear quadratic regulator.

Key words: distributed drive electric vehicles, longitudinal and vertical cooperative motion control, tire nonlinearity, linear-time-varying model, rapid control prototype

CLC Number:

U461

WANG Faan, YANG Quanhe, YIN Guodong, LIANG Jinhao, ZHANG Zhaoguo. Integrated Longitudinal and Vertical Motion Control Framework for Distributed Drive Electric Vehicles[J]. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2025, 61(4): 239-248.

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