Design and Evaluation of an Integrated Chassis Controller for Automotive Vehicle Emulation

In this paper, we design an integrated chassis controller (ICC) for vehicle emulation and investigate its performance. The proposed ICC consists of four-wheel automatic steering for lateral dynamics tracking and a suspension controller for emulating desired vertical motion. The lateral control unit utilizes sliding-mode theory, and its design is based on the observation that the coupling from vertical to lateral dynamics is weak in the linear operating regime of interest (i.e., for lateral accelerations below 4 m/s²). The proposed vertical controller consists of an active body controller and a force controller that are both designed based on mathematical models derived from physical principles and also validated by experimental data. The efficacy of the vertical controller is illustrated by experimental tests, while the performance of ICC is demonstrated by realistic scenarios in an advanced nonlinear simulator.