Control and performance evaluation of a clutch servo system with hydraulic actuation

A hydraulic actuated clutch control system for commercial cars is analyzed. The design of closed-loop controller is presented, based on a simplified. system model. A physical full-order model is also described and used to assess through computer simulations the dependence of the closed-loop system performances on some plant and controller key parameters. Selected performance indexes are gear shift timing and position tracking error and it results that they are mostly affected by two key parameters: oil pipeline length and controller sampling time. The resulting dependencies can be used to set performances and cost specifications for both plant configuration and electronic control unit. Experimental tests performed with different plant and controller configurations are reported. They closely match the simulation results, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.