A SMART WHEEL FOR IMPROVING THE ACTIVE SAFETY OF ROAD VEHICLES

A new smart wheel has been designed and tested. The smart wheel is able to measure the three forces and the three moments acting at the wheel-ground interface. The wheel is based on an original structural concept and it appears to be simple enough to be implemented in future automobiles. The paper presents the concept, the design issues and the experimental testing of the smart wheel. The structural part is composed basically by three spokes whose deformations (depending on the forces applied to the wheel) are sensed by means of strain gauges. The strain gauges signals can be filtered, amplified and digitally converted before they are transmitted to a remote receiver. Multi-Objective Programming has been used to design the system in order to reduce its mass and to maximise the sensor accuracy. After an accurate calibration phase, a series of experimental tests have been performed. First, the dynamic testing of the sensor has been completed through indoor tests, then the smart wheel has been fitted to a production passenger car. The performance of the smart wheel fits well the need of improving the active safety of automobiles. In other terms, the information given by the wheel, allowing to sense the three forces and the three moments, should lead to considerable improvement of the ABS and ESP/VDC performance with respect to today control logics.