Cascade based control of a drivetrain with backlash

Reducing fuel consumption, lowering emissions and improving driveability represent the main interests nowadays in automotive research centres from both academic and industry fields. The purpose is to develop more complex and accurate models for the automotive drivetrain in order to design and to apply different control strategies. In this paper, starting from the relations that describe the dynamical behaviour for each subsystem of an automotive powertrain, a nonlinear state-space model for a drivetrain with backlash was developed. The model was then implemented in Matlab/Simulink and a PID cascade controller was proposed in order to maintain a desired wheel speed trajectory.