Pulsed Active Steering Hardware in the Loop Experiment

Abstract

Active safety vehicle systems are continuously being researched to make vehicles safer to drive. Active steering is a new active safety system that involves controlling the vehicle steering angle during the vehicle's loss of stability. The steering signal, which an active steering system intervenes with, is brought to study in this thesis. Using a pulsed signal instead of a constant signal as the output of an active steering system arises new areas to study. This thesis focuses on the effect that the different pulse parameters have on the yaw and roll dynamics of a passenger vehicle. The parameters of a pulse consist of its frequency, amplitude, and pattern.

Simulations were done with different vehicle models in different simulation softwares to assess the effect that each of the pulse parameters has on the vehicle dynamics. These simulation softwares include DynaFlexPro, Matlab/Simulink and Adams/Car. In addition, a whole test bed was designed and assembled to carry out Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation experiments involving active steering systems. The test bed was used to firstly validate the results obtained from the simulations, and secondly to assess the applicability of a pulsed active steering system. Conclusions of the obtained results as well as future work are mentioned at the end of this thesis.