Experimental Study of Electric Vehicle Yaw Rate Tracking Control Based on Differential Steering

This paper investigates the experimental study of differential steering control of a four-wheel independently driven (FWID) electric vehicle (EV) based on the steer-by-wire (SBW) system. As each wheel of FWID vehicle can be independently driven, differential steering is realized by applying different driven torques to the front-two wheels. Firstly, the principle of the differential steering is analyzed based on the SBW system. When the differential steering is activated, the driver’s steering request is sent to the vehicle’s ECU. Then, the ECU gives different control signals to the front-left and front-right wheels, generating an external steering force on the steering components. The external steering force pushes the steering components to turn corresponding to the driver’s request. Secondly, to test the feasibility of differential steering, a FWID EV is assembled and the vehicle is equipped with four independently driven in-wheel motors. The corresponding control system is designed. Finally, the field test of the vehicle based on the proposed differential steering control strategy is performed. In the experiment, the fixed yaw rate tracking and varied yaw rate tracking maneuvers are employed. In the fixed yaw rate tracking, the vehicle can track the desired yaw rate well with differential steering. In addition, the vehicle can track the varied yaw rate with proposed differential steering. The test results confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the differential steering. By using the differential steering, a backup steering is established without additional components; thus, the costs can be reduced and the reliability of the vehicle steering system can be enhanced, significantly.

Escort Tug Performance Prediction Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

In this paper, we outline and validate a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method for determining the hydrodynamic forces of an escort tug in indirect towing mode. We consider a range of yaw angles from 0° to 90° and a travel speed of 8 knots. We discuss the effects of scaling on prediction of flow separation and hydrodynamic forces acting on the vessel by carrying out CFD studies on both model and full-scale escort tugs performing indirect escort maneuvers. As the escort performance in terms of maximum steering forces is strongly dependent on the onset of flow separation from the hull and skeg of the tug, the model-scale simulations under-predict the maximum steering force by 12% relative to the full-scale simulations. In addition, we provide a method for converting the hydrodynamic forces of the CFD escort study into towline and thrust forces.

Force Field-Based Control of Dynamic Particles with User-Specified Paths

We present a framework to design force fields that drive particles to follow a path under the physics-based animation system. In this framework, a user interactively specifies the desired path, represented by a Bezier curve using a GUI and the attraction force that drives a particle toward the target location. Then, the framework automatically defines the steering force to make a particle follow the desired path. To this end, we use B-splines to define the steering force that best approximates the user-specified path. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by showing a large number of particles following the desired path and forming an animated human figure. Our method creates a stable behavior of particles and is fast enough to run in real time.