Electric Differential for Traction Applications

The use of electric differential constitutes a technological advance of vehicle design along the concept of more electric vehicles. Electric differentials have the advantages of replacing loosy, heavy and inefficient mechanical transmission and mechanical differential with a more efficient, light and small electric motors directly coupled to the wheels via a single gear or an in-wheel motor. To date, electric differentials have been proposed for two and four wheeled vehicles. Despite its long reported success and possible advantages in terms of flexibility and direct torque control of the wheels during cornering and risky manoeuvres. Electric differential has several problems in practical applications; for instance, an increment of control loops, increase of computational effort and slip. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to present a simple and easy to implement electric differential. The proposed strategy has the advantages of having a linear model and a straightforward implementation. Numerical simulations using Matlab-Simulink are shown for a 4 kW system which is able to handle 500 kg mass and deliver peak power up to 10 kW during transit periods.