DRIVE FORCE CONTROL APPARATUS FOR FOUR-WHEEL-DRIVE VEHICLE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To control drive force of four wheels so as to minimize a grand total of energy consumed by the four-wheel tires slipping on the respective contact surfaces in a four-wheel-drive vehicle in which drive force is applied to left-right front wheels and left-right rear wheels mutually independently.SOLUTION: A drive force control apparatus, used for controlling drive force applied to four wheels by controlling a drive force application device (an in-wheel motor and a friction control device) that applies drive force to left-right front wheels and left-right rear wheels mutually independently, performs: computing vehicle speeds Vat positions of the four wheels, four-wheel contact loads Fzand driver-requiring drive force Fx (S30-S50); computing four-wheel target drive force Ffor unifying tire-slipping vector of the four wheels on the basis of the aforementioned computation results (S60); and controlling the drive force application device so that the four-wheel drive force equals the target drive force (S70).SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 2