All Wheel Independent Torque Control

A torque control policy for four-wheel drive road-going vehicles is developed, based on the use of a compact variable ratio unit (VRU) located at each wheel. Since the appropriate hardware is not yet available, a computer model is developed to examine what gear ratio range and frequency response might be required of the hardware to allow for improved performance and stability over current four-wheel drive systems. A comparison is then made to a front-wheel drive (FWD), rear-wheel drive (RWD) and four-wheel drive (4WD) to determine the effectiveness of the derived control policy.