Active vibration control for reduction of interior noise caused by R-MDPS of electric power steering in electric vehicle

Abstract

This paper presents a novel active vibration control (AVC) system for a motor driven power steering (MDPS) system to reduce interior noise in an electric vehicle. The novel control algorithm used for the AVC system is developed based on selection of two reference signals. One is the frequency modulation signal using the rotation speed of motor shaft of MDPS the other one is the band passed signal of acceleration measured on the major path structure identified by the blocked transfer path (BF-TPA). In addition, the piezo stack actuator is used for generation of control force of the AVC system in the frequency over 400 Hz. An MDPS system uses electronic power steering. An MDPS system attached to the rack gear of power steering system is called an R-MDPS. The vibration generated by the R-MDPS is transmitted to the car body through mounts attached onto the car subframe. Panel vibrations of car body are sources of vibroacoustic noise generated inside the car cabin. This vibracoustic noise is a structure-borne noise and causes passenger annoyance. The frequencies of the structure-borne noise measured inside the car cabin are 460 Hz and 920 Hz, which are the rotating frequency of the R-MDPS motor shaft and the second-order harmonic of the rotating speed of the motor shaft. To directly reduce the interior noise inside the car cabin, active noise control (ANC) has been used for the active cancellation of noises with frequencies less than 400 Hz. However, because the frequency of interior noise generated by the operation of the R-MDPS is higher than 400 Hz, AVC was employed in this study for the active cancellation of vibrations transmitted to the car body through the subframe mounts of the car. For application of AVC to the test car, the control force should be known. Therefore, the actuator for generating the control force should be inserted in the mount between the subframe and R-MDPS system. Installing the actuator in the test car is challenging because of the geometry limit of commercial cars. Hence, a test jig composed of an R-MDPS system and the subframe of the test car was developed and set up in the laboratory to study the applicability of AVC to R-MDPS. All investigations of AVC were performed using the test jig in the laboratory. The proposed method was successfully applied to the active cancellation of vibration at a target point on the subframe.