Robust post impact vehicle motion control using torque vectoring

Abstract: Several statistical studies have suggested that the risk of injury is significantly higher in multiple event accidents (MEAs) than in single event crashes. Improper driving in such scenarios leads to hazardous vehicle heading angles and excessive lateral deviations from thevehicle path, resulting in severe secondary crashes. In these situations, the vehicle becomes highly prone to side impacts and such impacts are more harmful to the occupants since the sides of the vehicle have less crash energy absorbing structures than the front and rear ends.Significant advancements have been made in the area of automotive safety to ensure passenger safety. Active safety systems, in particular, are becoming more advanced by the day with vehicles becoming over actuated with electric propulsion and x-by-wire systems. Keepingthat in mind, in this master thesis a post impact vehicle motion control strategy for an electric vehicle is suggested based on a hierarchical control structure which regulates the lateral deviation of the affected vehicle while maintaining safe heading angles after an impact.Sliding Mode Control (SMC) has been utilized in the higher controller which generates a virtual output used as an input for a lower controller performing torque allocation. The allocation methods were based on optimization, aimed to minimize tire utilization, and anormal force based approach. The performance of the controller was first evaluated with single track and two track model of the vehicle because of their simplicity making them easy to debug and also since they allowed for quick simulations. This was followed with evaluationwith a high fidelity vehicle model in IPG CarMaker for fine tuning the controller. It was observed that the use of SMC strategy to generate virtual yaw moment to be used in torque vectoring for controlling vehicle trajectory post impact proved to be a robust strategymanaging to control the vehicle even in cases of actuator failure. So it can be concluded that the hierarchical control structure with the higher Sliding mode controller, generating a virtual yaw moment, and a lower controller doing torque allocation using a normal force basedstrategy and an optimization approach worked as intended.