Directional Stability Augmentation for All Wheel Drive Vehicles

The ultimate objective of this work is to develop an optimized control strategy for all wheel, independent torque control for road-going vehicles, and to use this control primarily for directional stability. Thus far only front/rear torque control has been investigated although a complete model suitable for All Wheel Drive development has been formulated. A control policy has been postulated for front/rear torque control that performs better than front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, or 4 wheel drive, under some conditions. Based on the results obtained so far, an all wheel drive system with independent wheel torque control is anticipated to yield greatly improved handling under all conditions.