Throttle actuator control system for vehicle traction control

Accurate and quick positioning of the throttle valve in a gasoline engine i s required to implement various systems such as traction control systems (T CS), cruise control systems and drive-by-wire systems. In this research, th e throttle actuator system for TCS application was developed. Unlike other systems. this system consists of only one throttle body to obtain small vol ume and low manufacturing cost, and uses a DC servo motor for quick and acc urate responses. In order to drive the DC motor, a PWM signal generator and PWM amplifier were built and interfaced to the motor and controller. This paper also presents the position control logic of the throttle actuator wit h the TDC (time delay control) scheme with a variable reference model. By v arying the reference model based on the size of the step changes in the tar get throttle angle, the TDC scheme yields good transient response character istics in that both overshoot prevention and a quick response time are achi eved. Actual vehicle tests with this developed system incorporated with the TCS system show that it satisfies all the conditions required for the TCS operation. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.