3304 A Method of Optimal Wheel Torque Determination for the Turn Efficiency of Multi-Axle Vehicle

Recently, electric vehicles have received people's attention with growing concern about environmental problems. Direct-wheel-drive electric vehicles with in-wheel motors have the potential of advanced motion control. The application of electric motors will be expanded to heavy load vehicles. This paper proposes a method of optimal wheel torque determination for multi-wheel vehicles with independent wheel drive. The slip velocities and frictional forces on tires defined a frictional work done by all the tires in the vehicle system. The frictional work was minimized to obtain sets of optimal wheel torque distribution and steering angles. Numerical simulations were performed for the optimal solutions of an eight-wheel-vehicle with three different steering conditions: (a) front-four-wheel-steering, (b) all-wheel-steering, (c) front-four-wheel-steering with rear-wheel-steering in restricted angles.