The Effect of Torque Vectoring Differentials on Vehicle Handling Dynamics

Torque vectoring differentials (TVDs) in the study are based on an open differential with additional mechanisms or slightly change the mechanism of the open differential to be capable of distributing torque to two output shafts. A system obtains torque from input shaft and outputs into two separate shafts connected to tires, and which is capable of differential function and torque-disturbing function. There have been some TVDs available on the market but without any study on finding the difference between each of them. The study is going to summarize the steps as well as build a program to analyze TVDs. The programs was developed in Matlab and composed of vehicle model, tire model, road model and driving model. Through the program can we obtain and compare the dynamics of vehicles with different TVDs. The study will compare limit-slip function in different road conditions with a fixed input torque and compare variation trend of cornering radius as well as every type of velocity at different car speeds but with a fixed input torque. The result shows that torque-distributing can enhance the performance of cornering and retain more traction when tires slip; besides, every type of TVDs has its unique characteristic.