A Supervisory Control Strategy of Distributed Drive Electric Vehicles for Coordinating Handling, Lateral Stability, and Energy Efficiency

A supervisory control strategy, including dynamic control supervisor, handling-stability controller, energy efficiency controller, and coordinated torque allocator, is proposed for distributed drive electric vehicles to coordinate vehicle handling, lateral stability, and energy economy performance. In the dynamic control supervisor, firstly phase plane analysis is implemented to accurately define the vehicle stability boundary so that the look-up table of bounds can be established for online application. Subsequently, based on the feedback drive conditions and vehicle states, the identified boundary is dynamically quantified by the designed varying weight factor (VWF) in real time. In the handling-stability controller, a unified yaw rate reference of VWF is developed to simultaneously guarantee vehicle manoeuvrability and lateral stabilization. Then, a novel integral triple-steps method is proposed to calculate the proper direct yaw moment for the desired vehicle motion. In the energy efficiency controller, inter-axle torque distribution map is optimized for optimal vehicle energy economy. In the coordinated torque allocator, a torque increment allocation problem is formulated and optimized to realize the desired forces, meanwhile based on VWF to minimize energy consumption and tire workload usage. The validations of proposed strategy are conducted under various manoeuvres, yielding comprehensive improvements in terms of vehicle handling, lateral stability, and energy performance.