Simulation of Different Types of Electric Power Assisted Steering (EPS) to Investigate Applied Torque Positions' Effects

Nowadays a lot of car manufactures are switching to electric power steering. Regarding to packaging, cooling, performance and cost, they use different types of electric power steering such as column assisted, pinion assisted and rack assisted steering. This paper investigates to find out the effects of these differences in position of applied assisting torque on performance of electric power assisted steering. For this purpose three different EPS system models with PID controller are constructed. Seven and eight degrees of freedom models of EPS system are used to obtain system state equations. MATLAB/Simulink software is used to simulate steering models to investigate the effect of the position of applied assisting torque on steering efficiency and sensitivity in parking maneuvers, and obtain both open and closed loop system responses.