Developing a Strategy to Improve Handling Behaviors of a Medium-Size Electric Bus Using Active Anti-Roll Bar

Abstract

Electric vehicles are a major trend in research and development in the automobile industry. A vehicle’s handling ability is changed when the structure of the power system is altered, which is more obvious in medium-sized buses with higher load and a longer body whose body stiffness is relatively less stiff. In this context, flexible multi-body dynamic modeling, instead of rigid body modeling, is used to reflect the stiffness effects of the vehicle body and chassis systems. A control strategy is developed with an active variable stiffness anti-roll bar to improve vehicle handling characteristics by using the flexible body dynamic simulation with consideration of the step and single sinusoidal steering input tests. Through simulation, it was learned that the proposed control strategy could reduce the time of stabilization by 54.08% and suppress undesired handling behaviors in the step steering input test. Moreover, at high speed, the original unsteady condition became stabilized with little sacrifice in yaw velocity. In the single sinusoidal steering input test, the time of stabilization could be reduced by 8.43% and with 14.6% less yaw angle changes in the improved design. The overall handling was improved.