Abstract
This paper presents the development of a functional down-scaled prototype of a passenger car with capability to control steering, wheel torques, wheel loads and camber individually. The adopted chassis technology is based on a modularised platform, referred to as Autonomous corner modules (ACM), which simplifies the re-use of components at the four corners of the vehicle and between different vehicles. This work gives an insight in the design of the vehicle and the selection of electrical actuators and sensors to provide all ACM functions. Since a part of the implemented chassis components do not admit to be scaled down at the same level, necessary design modifications are suggested. The problems of scaling, meaning that a down-scaled prototype cannot fully emulate a full-scaled vehicle’s all functions simultaneously, are a great disadvantage of down scaling. For example is gravity one desired parameter that is hard to physically scale down. In order to evaluate the behaviour of the down-scaled prototype, it is of high importance to establish the characteristics of the developed vehicle and its subsystems. In particular, tyre design is considered as complex. For this reason, different ideas of methods to confirm tyre characteristics are proposed. Also the paper presents the initial process of developing the prototype vehicle that is later to be used in vehicle dynamics research.
Keywords: Autonomous corner modules, active chassis, down-scaled prototype, overactuation