Compensation for backlash of automobile drivetrain under control cycle limitation

Abstract

This study proposes a method to compensate for backlash of vehicle drivetrains under the condition where the control period is made longer. A vibration control must be developed to compensate for the backlash of gears because this nonlinearity degrades the vibration amplitude. Additionally, an engine used as an actuator have a constraint in which control cycles are made longer due to roughly updated cycles of torques. We apply a sampled-data controller, which can explicitly evaluate responses between sampling points thanks to its design process without discrete approximations, to the extended control cycle. To cope with backlash effects, a simple control mode switching algorithm is presented. In the algorithm, unscented Kalman filter estimates the plant states to identify the contacts in backlash. Simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed control system.