An estimation method for dynamic vehicle turn center

The instantaneous vehicle turn center is of great significance in the design and analysis of vehicle steering and handling. Due to the influences of vehicle flexible components, the vehicle turn center is not intersected at one point and the traditional determination method for vehicle turn center is not applicable for multi-axle vehicles. In this paper, a novel instantaneous tire turn center (TTC) method is proposed to estimate the instantaneous vehicle turn center to provide a guidance for the design of vehicle steering and analysis of handling. The motivation of the tire turn center concept is introduced and the calculation method is developed. The instantaneous vehicle turn center is estimated based on the calculation of instantaneous TTC. The estimation results of the vehicle turn center of a two-axle vehicle and a three-axle off-road vehicle under different vehicle velocities and lateral accelerations during steering are presented based on the vehicle dynamics models built by ADAMS software. Since there is no simplifications of the vehicle in the proposed estimation method, the determined instantaneous vehicle turn center is more accurate and can reflect the actual vehicle motion better as compared to the traditional vehicle turn center in transient motion process. The estimated instantaneous vehicle turn center provides a guidance for design and optimization of vehicle steering as well as steering angles control strategies to make all tire turn centers controlled at the instantaneous vehicle turn center, thus reducing tire wears and improving the whole vehicle steering coordination performance.