A study of the driveline gap influence on vehicle drivability

Drivability is a key factor to the quality of a car. The gap is an inevitable factor in driveline which has influence on drivability. It is thus necessary to study the influence of the gap on drivability. By setting up a low-frequency longitudinal vehicle dynamics model to simulate the tip-in drive condition with bad drivability, the influence of the gap on the car's drivability was studied. It included the impact of clearance gaps at different locations and different gap sizes on drivability. Some useful rules to control-oriented modeling were obtained. The methods of classical 'torque slope control' to improve drivability were applied to further study the problem when the vehicle has a big gap. In order to solve this problem, a closed-loop controller was designed and the car's drivability was improved.