Towards Energy Efficient Control of Individual Wheel Drive Articulated Vehicles

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis was to increase knowledge in the area of articulated vehicles and specifically energy efficient traction control. Eletrical propulsion of vehicles has started to be popular due to its versatility and freedom of design. One reason is the reduced fuel consumption associated with hybrid solutions that generate power through a smaller engine that can run at its optimal setpoint. The placement of the electrical motor is in this case dependent on the design of the driveline. Vehicles with one electrical motor for each driving wheel can be designed without a mechanical driveline. This kind of driveline is referred to as individual-wheel drive is usually over-actuated. With the extra actuation provided by these vehicles some critera, i.e. energy efficiency, component wear, traction and driveability, can be optimized. Experiments were performed by using ArtiTRAX (Developed at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden), a 320kg small-scale articulated vehicle with individual wheel drive. In this thesis we study how the extra actuation can be used to minimize the energy consumption and to determine tyre parameters.