Rolling stability control utilizing rollover index for in-wheel motor electric vehicle

Abstract

In this paper, a novel integrated stability program (ISP) based on robust rolling stability control (RSC) for in-wheel electric vehicle (EV) is proposed. Since EVs are driven by electric motors, they have the following four remarkable advantages: (1) motor torque generation is quick and accurate, (2) motor torque can be estimated precisely, (3) a motor can be attached to each wheel, and (4) a motor can output negative torque as a brake actuator. These advantages enable a high-performance three-dimensional vehicle motion control with a distributed in-wheel-motor system. Rolling stability is important for all classes of light-vehicles, especially, for EVs that have narrow tread and high center of gravity. In this study, RSC is designed using two-degree-of-freedom control (2-DOF), which achieves tracking capability to reference value and disturbance suppression. However, as the drivability of the vehicle will be changed significantly if only RSC is applied, vehicle rolling motion should be controlled depending on the rolling state. Therefore, variable weight-ISP and variable reference-ISP are proposed using rolling state information. For detecting rolling state, rollover index (RI) is introduced. The validity of the proposed methods is shown by the simulation and the experimental results. © 2010 the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.