Enhanced Detection of Minispare Usage

Abstract: Minispares, or spare wheels, can often cause a lot of problems for the control of the car since it rotates notably faster than normal tyres. This because it is often smaller to reduce weight. When a minispare is used, it needs to be detected for the control system to understand that one tyre is allowed to spin faster compared to the others. If the control system does not know this, it will believe that the wheel is slipping and therefore, slow down the speed of the tyre. This detection must happen fast so that the driving experience is affected as little as possible. This project consisted of improving an already existing method that BorgWarner currently uses to detect minispare usage. The main goal was to decrease the detection time to enhance the driving experience. To reach this goal, different detection algorithms were created and validated with various tests. The algorithms were all based on estimations of the tyres’ velocities which were then compared to the measured velocities. In the end, two algorithms were presented which could detect a minispare usage, and the lack of it, in a satisfactory time.