Active Control of In-Wheel Motor Electric Vehicle Suspension Using the Half Car Model

الملخص

In recent years, electric vehicles are becoming more mainstream.
Even though in-wheel electric motor vehicles have been developed as
prototype vehicles, they have not become common yet. One of the
reasons for this is that when an electric motor is placed in the wheel it
becomes heavier, which tends to worsen the road holding properties
of the vehicle. Active suspensions are currently used in some high-end
vehicles to improve passenger comfort, vehicle handling and road
holding. In this paper an active suspension is used show that it is
possible to mitigate the road holding problems caused by in-wheel
electric vehicles. The ground-hook method is used for the control
strategy. First, a quarter car model is used to show that adding a
weight to the wheel does actually decrease the road holding
performance of the vehicle. Afterwards, the active suspension is shown
to be able to improve the road holding properties of the vehicle to
acceptable levels. The simulations are also repeated with a half car
model. They also show that increasing the tire mass worsens the road
holding performance of the vehicle. However, this bad performance
can be reversed by the ground-hook active suspension. Simulations
also show that the ground-hook controller worsens the passenger
comfort level in the vehicle.