Rack force feedback for an electrical power steering simulator

Abstract : This paper presents a force feedback control approach to enhance the realism and the fidelity of an electric power steering simulator. This simulator includes a real steering system with its electric assistance and a DC motor intended for the load rack force restitution. This motor allows to compensate for the lack of real tires and to simulate the tire/road contact as in a real driving situation. Besides, two different scenarios case study are introduced to prove the effectiveness of the various algorithms: virtual sensor based on sliding mode observer for the unknown input estimation and a sliding mode control for the force feedback.