Tire–road friction coefficient estimation based on the resonance frequency of in-wheel motor drive system

In this paper, a resonance frequency-based tire–road friction coefficient (TRFC) estimation method is proposed by considering the dynamics performance of the in-wheel motor drive system under small slip ratio conditions. A frequency response function (FRF) is deduced for the drive system that is composed of a dynamic tire model and a simplified motor model. A linear relationship between the squared system resonance frequency and the TFRC is described with the FRF. Furthermore, the resonance frequency is identified by the Auto-Regressive eXogenous model using the information of the motor torque and the wheel speed, and the TRFC is estimated thereafter by a recursive least squares filter with the identified resonance frequency. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through simulations and experimental tests on different road surfaces.