Abstract:
As the demand for electrically propelled vehicles increases, an emphasis is being placed on power saving techniques. An investigation into the possibility of reducing the energy losses in the tyre of a vehicle during dynamic driving conditions was conducted. The behaviour of the tyre was investigated on component level by means of a tyre drum test rig, which was used to simulate the tyre under various camber and slip angle conditions. A fully validated FTire tyre model was used for the tyre simulations. The tyre simulation results showed a 37.77% reduction in the power loss at a vertical load of 3500N and 56.18% at a vertical load of 6850N by combining camber and slip angle control. These results represent the extreme cases of camber and slip angles. The study was extended to a full vehicle simulation with a MSC ADAMS non-linear full vehicle model that is validated on system level. The FTire tyre model was used for the full vehicle simulations. A camber angle versus lateral acceleration relationship was found and used as inputs for a camber controller. The implementation of the camber controller yielded an energy saving of 4.63% for a constant radius test and 4.41% for a double lane change manoeuvre, when compared to the baseline (pure steering) case. The proposed investigation showed that there exists a possibility to reduce the power losses in the tyres with the use of active wheel positioning.
