OWHEEL is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions RISE project with the focus on a disruptive engineering of alternative vehicle chassis concepts for future automated driving AD mobility. The OWHEEL works will cover development, industrial implementation and testing of innovative wheel corners for electric vehicles having automation level 4 to 5 in accordance with SAE J3016 standard. These works are the backbone of strong multidisciplinary professional network that will extend beyond OWHEEL’s lifespan and is envisaged to respond to emerging skills needs in the automotive sector.

OWHEEL deals with four different classes of wheel corners for benchmarking:

  • Passive corner with specific wheel positioning – The improvement in the driving comfort has to be achieved through the packaging design allowing specific wheel positioning (e.g. with extra cambering) to provide targeted tyre-road interaction dynamics.
  • Passive composite corner – The improvement in the driving comfort has to be achieved through new design of the corner with composite materials (only passive suspension is being considered).
  • Active corner with ordinary ride dynamics control – The control on the driving comfort is realized through (semi-)active suspension with enhanced control strategies;
  • Active corner with integrated wheel positioning control – The control on the driving comfort is realized through the cooperative control on the wheel camber, toe and caster angle through mechatronic actuators.

Barys_diagramm

The target outcome of the OWHEEL project can be demonstrated on the well-known conflict diagram between comfort and road holding performance