As an emerging research focus, corner module-by-wire chassis vehicles address the pain points of traditional chassis in flexibility, cost, and development efficiency, and have become one of the key infrastructures in the autonomous driving era. However, their large number of actuators significantly increases the risk of failures. This paper analyzes the characteristics of such vehicles and studies the fault-tolerant control for their drive system failures.
Firstly, a full-vehicle dynamic model was established, with mathematical modeling conducted for the vehicle body, motor, tire, and corner module system models. Secondly, a hierarchical yaw stability control strategy was designed for the non-faulty actuator scenario: the decision-making and control layer adopted both Sliding Mode Control (SMC) and fuzzy PID control, selecting the method with better performance to output the additional yaw moment; the control allocation layer used a quadratic programming algorithm based on tire load rate to distribute the upper-layer target yaw moment, converting it into each wheel’s torque for optimal matching of constraint conditions.For fault-tolerant control of drive system failures, possible failure scenarios of the drive system were analyzed to classify different failure modes. Through torque reconstruction control under non-faulty actuator conditions, fault-tolerant strategies were designed for single-motor failure, diagonal dual-motor failure, and coaxial dual-motor failure.
To verify the control strategies’ feasibility, a co-simulation platform was built using MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim, and the fault stability control strategies under the three failure modes were tested under specific conditions. Under constant-speed straight-line conditions, the strategy’s compensation effect on vehicle dynamics after motor failure was observed; under double-lane change conditions, the vehicle’s lateral kinematic control capability post-motor failure was verified. Simulation results show that the designed fault-tolerant control strategy for drive system failures can effectively maintain the vehicle’s expected dynamics and stability