Development of a Torque Vectoring Strategy to improve Performance in Electric Vehicles with Individually Driven Wheels

In this work, a new torque vectoring strategy is developed and the results are compared with those of existing controllers that are widely used for such applications in the existing literature. The objective of said strategy is to generate the corrective yaw moment through a differential of forces applied to the individual wheels of a vehicle in order to stabilize the vehicle and improve the overall performance in mixed conditions. A novel algorithm that combines different low-level controllers is constructed in order to best leverage the desired behaviors of each controller in different traction scenarios is presented. Both the existing controllers and the new strategy were compared by simulating a double lane change maneuver on a planar vehicle model at different traction levels in order to demonstrate the functionality and stability of the proposed approach. The results of these maneuvers are also used to understand the impact of the proposed torque vectoring strategy and existing controllers on the vehicle behavior.