Nonlinear Disturbance Observer of Clutch Slipping Torque for Multi-Mode Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Clutch slipping torque varies complicatedly and has a strong nonlinearity during the mode transition of hybrid electric vehicles. In order to estimate the clutch slipping torque, an online estimator based on the nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO) is proposed. First, an estimation-oriented model of the clutch slipping torque is established based on the LuGre friction model. Next, the NDO is designed to estimate the unknown part of clutch slipping torque based on the dynamics of the output shaft, while the output shaft torque required by NDO is estimated by a Luenberger state observer. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed estimator, experiments are conducted under different initial slipping speeds and inlet oil temperatures. The results show that the proposed estimator gains high accuracy.