Driving Force Control for Water-to-Land Transition of Distributed Drive Amphibious Vehicles

In response to the complex shore slope road conditions and the switching of water–land environments during the amphibious vehicle’s landing process, a landing drive force control strategy for amphibious vehicles is proposed. First, based on the shore slope gradient, buoyancy effect, and amphibious vehicle acceleration, the drive force of the front and rear wheels of the amphibious vehicle is pre-allocated. Then, referring to the road parameters of common road types, the road adhesion coefficient and optimal slip ratio of the current road surface where the amphibious vehicle is located are identified based on the principle of fuzzy control. Subsequently, with the slip ratio difference as the control target, the drive motor is controlled based on the sliding mode control algorithm to achieve tracking of the optimal slip ratio. A joint simulation is carried out using CarSim and Simulink, and the results are compared with those without control. The simulation results show that the drive force control strategy proposed in this paper can reduce the water-to-land time by 9.1 s and quickly reduce the wheel slip ratio to below 0.2, controlling it near the optimal slip ratio, thereby improving the vehicle’s power and stability.