It has been a significant challenge to reduce weights of the vehicles to satisfy the regulations that require development of environmentally-safe vehicles with low CO2 emissions. The conventional leaf springs, designed for the optimized performance together with safety factors, are made of steel. However, it is considered that the steel leaf springs are replaced by lighter ones in order to fulfill the specified requirements. Fiber reinforced composite materials with polymer based matrix offer a great potential for manufacturing leaf springs with lightweight, high mechanical and fatigue performance. Therefore, leaf spring manufacturers have great interest in those materials to replace steel parts with the composite ones and an increasing number of studies have been published in the literature in recent years. In this study, fiber reinforced composite compared with steel leaf springs based on endurance rig tests will be presented.
This paper is on the design and analysis of a velocity scheduled robust yaw stability controller for a light commercial vehicle. The considered light commercial vehicle is fitted with a proof-of-concept active steering system controlled by a separate generic electronic control unit. Single and double track models of the vehicle are used for controller design and simulation testing, respectively. A robust control method based on mapping frequency domain specifications into a chosen controller parameter plane is used. A toolbox with an interactive graphical user interface designed for this method is adapted for use with the model regulator architecture. The underlying steering control actuator is a velocity scheduled model regulator. The designed controllers are tested for steering model regulation and yaw moment disturbance rejection using maneuvers like double lane change. Details of the experimental vehicle with active steering, built to test the concepts developed in the paper is also presented.
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