An optimized excitation signal design for identification of PWA model and application to automotive throttles

Abstract

In the automotive application for Electronic Control Units (ECU), dynamic models with high-precision to simulate mechatronic actuators are required for various analysis and design tasks like Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) simulation. It is known that the modeling of systems with significant friction effects is not accessible. The piecewise-affine (PWA) model has recently attracted considerable interest due to its high approximation capability for modeling systems with friction. Because the model quality depends intensely on the test signal design, a model-free optimized excitation signal design for identifying PWA models is presented in this paper. The presented method is demonstrated with an automotive throttle, and a PWA model is identified with a four-step identification approach. The result shows that the optimization method can achieve a better model quality, which is sufficient for the HiL simulation.