OPTIMAL LONGITUDINAL SLIP RATIO ALLOCATION & CONTROL OF A HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLE WITH eAWD CAPABILITIES

This paper introduces a Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) with eAWD capabilities via the use of a traditional Series-Parallel hybrid transaxle at the front axle and an electric Rear Axle Drive (eRAD) unit at the rear axle. Such a vehicle requires proper wheel torque allocation to the front and rear axles in order to meet the driver demands. A model of the drivetrain is developed using Bond Graphs and is used in co-simulation with a vehicle model from the CarSim software suite for validation purposes. A longitudinal slip ratio control architecture is proposed which allocates slip ratio to the front and real axles via a simple optimization algorithm. The Youla parametrization technique is used to develop robust controllers to track the optimal slip targets generated by the slip ratio optimization algorithm. The proposed control system offers a unified approach to longitudinal vehicle control under both traction and braking events under any road surface condition. It is shown in simulation that the proposed control system can properly allocate slip ratio to the front and rear axles such that tires remain below their force saturation limits while vehicle acceleration/braking is maximized while on a low friction road surface.