Research on the method of mass estimation for heavy vehicles

Abstract

To solve the vehicle mass estimation problems, two vehicle mass estimation methods based on both commonly used dynamics method and kinematic method are analyzed by simulation and experimental study. The principles of two vehicle mass estimation methods are described. Then a model is built on the TruckSim software platform and the simulation analysis is carried out taking into account these two methods in multi conditions. Some vehicle experiments are carried out based on the simulation results. A method of vehicle speed redundancy calculation and acceleration calculation are proposed, and the real time vehicle mass is estimated by using the recursive least squares (RLS) with time varying forgetting factor. The research results demonstrate that the speed redundancy calculation method and acceleration calculation method are effective and accurate. And the convergence speed of the algorithm can be significantly improved by reducing shifts. It is concluded that, compared with the kinematic estimation algorithm, the proposed longitudinal dynamic estimation algorithm can estimate vehicle mass effectively with better robustness, more accuracy and faster convergence, and its engineering application is valuable.

Keywords

• vehicle engineering
• mass estimate
• dynamics method
• kinematic method
• recursive least squares (RLS)