The optimal control law of the power supplied to the wheeled vehicle in case of curvilinear movement

BACKGROUND: Highly-mobile wheeled vehicles are designed to move on roads and terrain in various road and soil conditions, which is accompanied by frequent and significant changes in traction forces and rolling resistance forces. In this regard, in order to maintain vehicle mobility and to ensure low energy costs when performing transport tasks, it is necessary to continuously change the operating mode during motion from the completely locked mode to the differential mode in the case of a mechanical transmission. At the same time, the transmission operating mode selected by the driver is not always reasonable. Thus, the development of a law for controlling the power supplied to the propulsion system, ensuring minimal energy losses while maintaining vehicle mobility in widely varying road conditions, is a relevant task. OBJECTIVE: Increasing the energy efficiency of highly-mobile wheeled vehicles by applying a control law for the power supplied to the propulsion system, adaptive to driving conditions. METHODS: Increasing the energy efficiency of motion can be achieved by means of reducing losses due to wheel slipping by controlling the power supplied to the propulsion system. It is advisable to obtain the control law as a result of solving an optimization problem, where the loss power is chosen as the objective function, and the traction forces developed on each of the wheels are chosen as the varied values. At the same time, in order to maintain the ability of vehicle to move, it is necessary to take into account that the total traction force on all wheels must be determined by external conditions and be provided by the powertrain. To solve the optimization problem, the Lagrange multiplier method was used. RESULTS: The conducted studies made it possible to obtain a unified law of adaptive control of the power supplied to the propulsion system in analytical form, applicable in a wide range of road conditions in both straight and curvilinear motion, ensuring the distribution of moments across the driving wheels of the machine close to optimal. CONCLUSIONS: The application of the developed law for controlling the power supplied to the propulsion system, based on the use of information about the longitudinal and vertical forces, rotational velocities and steer angles of the wheels during the motion, will improve the efficiency of performing transport tasks when moving a vehicle in continuously changing road conditions. This is achieved due to reducing the workload on the driver in terms of controlling differential locks in comparison with a manual transmission both in straight and curvilinear motion.