Dynamic Characteristic Modeling and RBF-SMC Based Torque Control of a Novel Torque Vectoring Drive-Axle for Electric Vehicles

In order to realize the arbitrary distribution of left/right wheel driving torque for electric vehicles with centralized drive system, which is similar to the advantages of in-wheel motor drive system, a novel torque vectoring (TV) drive-axle system is proposed. With the help of it, the active safety and steering maneuverability of the vehicle can be easily improved. In this paper, the structure and torque distribution principle of the novel TV drive-axle are analyzed first. Second, a relatively accurate system dynamic model of the TV drive-axle is established based on bond graph theory, and the system dynamic response characteristics are analyzed. Third, in order to improve the quality of the system dynamic characteristics, a TV drive-axle system controller based on the radial basis neural network sliding mode control (RBF-SMC) strategy is proposed. Finally, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test bench is built, and the effectiveness of the proposed RBF-SMC control strategy is verified by the combination of off-line simulation and HIL experimental. The simulation and HIL experimental results all demonstrate that the proposed RBF-SMC control strategy can effectively improve the system dynamic response quality of the TV drive-axle, so as the controlled TV drive-axle can meet the requirements of real vehicle application.