Co-simulation of Driveline Torque Bias Controls

Simulation is considered as an essential activity to save time and cost of building physical prototyping hardware. However, systems from different engineering domains such as control system design, mechanical design, or hydraulic design generally requires different simulation tools. To tackle this situation, the method of co-simulation is applied to communicate between different processes during simulation. It is served as the foundation of sophisticated virtual prototyping system simulation activities. This paper presents the effort at Visteon of applying co-simulation to design and verify the electronically controllable torque bias device. The controller modules are developed in MATLAB. ADAMS is applied to create a high-fidelity virtual prototyping vehicle model. The vehicle model is then modified to integrate the function of torque bias control devices. The co-simulation of the controller modules with the vehicle model is performed by using ADAMS/Controls. The simulation is used to study several winter test conditions on packed snow or icy road. A tire model fitted with laboratory test data is implemented during the simulation. Experimental data from the field test are used to correlate the results of co-simulation. Well-correlated simulation results with the field test data show the promise of designing and verifying driveline torque bias control as well as other control modules in virtual prototyping environment.