Autonomously Operated Power-Dividing Unit for Driveline Modeling and AWD Vehicle Dynamics Control

This article presents a math model of a hypothetical driveline power-dividing unit. The use of this model and generalized vehicle parameters made it possible to synthesize a universal (generalized) model of the vehicle’s driveline system that can be used for modeling virtually all the currently known passive as well as active autonomously operated power-dividing units. The salient feature of the developed computational algorithm consists in its capability to autonomously switch the states of active power-dividing units from one to another, i.e., to control the performance of the power-dividing units. An algorithm for controlling the performance of autonomously operated driveline power-dividing units was also developed. The algorithm allows flexibly controlling the flow of power to the drive wheels and improving the AWD vehicle dynamics. As an illustration the article presents some results of simulating the motion of an AWD middle class SUV with three controlled power-dividing units, control of which provides the specified motion of the vehicle.