An Active Return-to-Center Control Strategy with Steering Wheel Sensor for Electric Power Steering System

For the vehicles equipped with Electric Power Steering (EPS) system, the friction and damping effect brought by assisted motor and worm gear mechanism influence the return ability and handing stability. In order to eliminate the impacts, it is necessary to add return-to-center control in EPS control strategy. This paper proposes a practical active return-to-center control strategy with steering wheel angle signals based on return state identification. In the strategy, the return state of the steering system is identified quickly according to the two signals steering wheel angle velocity and steering wheel torque. Only under return state, a double closed-loop PID control strategy is carried out to calculate a compensation current to improve the return ability. For validating the proposed strategy, a fine EPS model including BLDC assisted motor is built based on carsim and simulink co-simulation platform. Simulation results shows that the proposed control strategy can improve the steering wheel return ability effectively.