Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation for Traction Control and the Debugs of its Electric Control Unit

A Traction Control System (TCS) is developed for the Anti-lock Braking system (ABS). A Hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) method is used to help debug the control strategy of a TCS for a passenger vehicle.

The TCS HILS platform is extended from the ABS test rig by adding a throttle controller and two pressure control solenoid valves. First is established vehicle simulation model that includes a half vehicle dynamic submodel, an engine submodel, a manual transmission system submodel and the tyre submodel. Secondly, the control model of the TCS based on the logical threshold method is included in the same digital simulation software. The digital simulations of the passenger vehicle shows that the control model with different control thresholds as input is correct and it can be run in a real TCS's structure parameters and real electric control unit (ECU).

An ECU of TCS with an Infineon's 16-bit microcontroller C167CS as the main central processor unit is designed. The control parameters of the TCS's ECU are debugged in the HILS platform to fit the real passenger vehicle based on an experimental program.