Virtual mechanical load setup for steer-by-wire: a case study

In the electric drives scenario, the automotive is one of the most active and promising application fields. So far, electric steer eliminated many elements of a hydraulic system, with fair fuel economy in the process. The next step, the electronic steering, is in progress. It will definitively substitute any mechanical connection with the steering wheel by wire-transmitted digital signals to one or more remote electric motors. Obviously, the design of any control strategy has to pass through hardware verification. At the early stages, or when a real car prototype is not easily available, the design could greatly benefit of a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) emulator, to enable the fast control prototyping. In the paper, a reduced-order model, implemented with a high-dynamic electric drive, substitutes the real mechanical load. The model details, the system architecture and the experimental results are presented in the paper.