Integrated Chassis Control with Four-Wheel Independent Steering under Constraint on Front Slip Angles

This paper presents a method to design an integrated chassis controller with four-wheel independent steering (4WIS) under the constraint on front slip angles for electric vehicles (EVs) adopting in-wheel motor (IWM) driving system. To improve lateral stability and maneuverability of a vehicle, direct yaw moment control strategy is adopted. A control allocation method is adopted to distribute control yaw moment into tire forces, generated by 4WIS. If corrective steering angles of 4WIS are added to front steering angles generated by a driver, it can deteriorate control performance because the lateral tire force of front wheels easily saturated and it causes loss of required yaw moment needed to stabilize a vehicle. To cope with the problem, it is necessary to impose constraints on front slip angles. To compensate the loss of control yaw moment caused by the constraint on front slip angles, a constrained control allocation method is presented. Simulation on driving simulation tool, CarSim®, shows that the proposed integrated chassis controller is capable of maintaining lateral stability and maneuverability without performance deterioration under the constraint on the front slip angles.