Active aerodynamics is a growing field in the race car and high-performance vehicles segments, since each situation on the track may require different aero forces to achieve the best vehicle dynamics performance.

This paper presents an active aerodynamics control system developed through the active control of the body trim. By interchanging four different setups on the suspension heights with a fuzzy logic control, relevant advantage is obtained in terms of lap time reduction.

Two systems, a PID and a Feedforward logic, are studied to implement the control strategy and important differences are found in the stability of tire-ground forces benefiting the latter.

Furthermore, the system was validated in a Driver-In-the-Loop (DIL) static simulator with a more realistic road conditions and important insights in terms of subjective evaluation.

In this paper, after a brief overview about the State of the Art in terms of active suspensions, a development procedure for an innovative control algorithm has been shown. With the aim of improving dynamic and handling performance of a high-end full electric sport vehicle by active control of the aerodynamic forces acting on the vehicle body.

The control algorithm’s development procedure has been implemented according to an iterative path with an extended use of MaxPerformance package of VI-CarRealTime, in cosimulation with Matlab-Simulink environment. Specific maneuvers have been developed to test the action of the active control systems in development phase.

The effects of vehicle body motion and ride heights variation, which are influenced both by driving conditions and aerodynamic forces, on aerodynamic forces themselves and vehicle overall balance has been shown; highlighting the important impact that these effects can have on vehicle handling behavior and lap-time performance. This observation brought to the implementation of an active suspensions’ control algorithm aimed to control aerodynamic forces exploiting the phenomenon.

For the active vehicle trim control system, two alternative algorithms were developed for the actuators’ middle-low level control. One consisting of a pure feed-back system, while the other is composed by a feed-forward control model completed by a “light-action” feed-back control system. If the feed-forward control, in off-line simulations, seemed to not be effective enough, in actively controlling the vehicle trim, to reach the same aerodynamic advantage given by the pure feed-back control system. The pure feed-back control system completely failed the DIL validation, showing a substantially unstable behavior. The feed-forward model, instead, demonstrated to be even more effective than shown in off-line simulations, improving not only the vehicle lap-time performance, but also, and most importantly, the confidence that the vehicle gives to the driver, allowing him to get closer to the vehicle limit.


Active Aerodynamics Through Active Body Control: Modelling and Static Simulator Validation

Division / Sponsors: 
Design Engineering Division and Computers & Information In Engineering Division


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2020/volume/83907

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