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Force estimation on a McPherson system by means of a state estimator and a multibody model

Book Contribution - Book Chapter Conference Contribution

External loads acting on mechanical systems represent important quantities which often need to be determined for design, control or monitoring purposes. For instance in the automotive sector so-called Wheel Center Forces (WCFs), i.e. the forces acting on the center of the vehicle wheels, are required in order to perform durability analyses. WCFs can be directly measured by means of dedicated measurement wheels, but the latter turn out to be expensive, intrusive and time-consuming to install. An appealing alternative could be to virtually measure those forces by combining information coming from a system model and more economical, less intrusive and easier-to-install sensors. State estimation is the mathematical tool that can be used in order to combine simulation and sensors data and to estimate the quantity of interest. More specifically, in this work, an augmented Extended Kalman Filter (A-EKF) based on amultibody model of the system and on a random walk model for the unknown forces is used to process the sensorsinformation. A penalty formulation is used in order to write the equations of the multibody system into the formrequired for the specific state estimator. A virtual experiment on a McPherson suspension system is performed in order to show the feasibility of the approach. The vertical component of the WCFs is estimated by using the suspension deflection and the acceleration of the wheel center as processed measurements in the estimator. It is also shown how modeling errors are partially compensated in the estimation of the states and of the unknown force.
Book: ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Multibody Dynamics
Pages: 1 - 7
Publication year:2017