Fault tolerant control for steering by wire electric vehicle on the steering deadlocking condition with nonzero angle

Steering by wire is a promising technology that facilitates the vehicle lateral tire forces control. However, several faults may occur during the life time of the system due to the complexity of the system. It is critical to guarantee the control performance of the vehicle even the fault happen on the steering by wire system. A few fault tolerant control schemes have been developed to remedy the problem. While most of the previous studies assumed that the steering angle was still controllable or fixed at zero degree condition. In this paper, the critical fault condition that the front steering wheel is deadlocking with nonzero angle is firstly investigated. Combining with four wheels independently drive, a novel fault tolerant control algorithm is designed using model predictive control method. Co-simulations of Carsim and Simulink demonstrate that the suggested algorithm is able to cope up with this situation and enhance vehicle safety.