IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Recent Advances on Modelling, Optimization and Signal Processing Methods in Vehicle Dynamics and Crash-worthiness

Due to the significant growth in transportation industries, the importance of interactions between vehicle technologies and humans from the safety aspect plays an important role in the new developments of complex vehicle systems. Therefore, from academic and industrial viewpoints, increasing attention has been paid to complex vehicle correlative technologies with full consideration of issues like safety, robust performance, impact analysis, optimization, automation, motion control, etc. All aforementioned issues provide a basis for the design and operation of practical vehicle systems in order to achieve desired complex tasks. Different than a number of well-established vehicle journals such as the IEEE Transaction on Vehicular Technology, the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, the primary objective of this Special Section in IEEE Access is to provide an open-access forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange their latest achievements and to identify critical issues and challenges for future investigation on mathematical-based or computer-aided modelling, optimization and signal processing techniques in vehicle dynamics and crash-worthiness. Based on this focus the special section has accepted seven high-quality papers after rigorous peer-review processes, the contents of which are summarized as follows. In the work done byMa et al. (Exploration of the reliability of automotive electronic power steering system using device junction electrothermal profile cycle), the authors investigated the simulation of the electric power steering (EPS) device transient junction temperature and the accumulated damage estimation value owing to instantaneous thermal mechanical stress cycling to estimate EPS converter reliability. Moreover, an electrothermal model is developed and the obtained results are compared with those from EPS device temperature testing. In the work by Meng and Ma (Modeling, analysis, and experimental testing of a selective catalytic reduction dosing system), the authors introduced a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system, which is used in modern ship or vehicle diesel engines. SCR technique is a key enabler for NOx reduction, which is critical for the performance and fuel economy of both ship and vehicle diesel engines since a more advanced timing of the diesel injection can be used. The authors propose a new urea dosing sub-system of SCR, which realizes flow feedback with a flow sensor and a different control method. It is verified by simulation and experiment that the proposed system can successfully solve the precise control of the urea dosing system with nonlinear dynamics. The work entitled ‘Review of the energy saving hydraulic system based on common pressure rail’ by Shen et al. studied the development of an energy-saving hydraulic system based on CPR (Common Pressure Rail), which can be potentially applicable to constructionmachinerywidely. Firstly, the principle of CPR is introduced. Then, the main components including hydraulic transformers and storage elements are reviewed followed by an analysis of the development and research efforts focused on energy saving application and control performance investigation. Finally, the challenges and the development direction are discussed. In the work by Zhang et al. (Study on self-tuning tyre friction control for developing main-servo loop integrated chassis control system), the authors proposed the concept of inherent flexibility of hierarchical structure scheme with a main servo-loop control structure to the problem of integrated chassis control system for the vehicle. The proposed control strategies are verified by computer simulations. For the work done by Su (Master–slave control for active suspension systems with hydraulic actuator dynamics), the author studied a master-slave control design methodology for a vehicle active suspension system based on a robust H∞ control and an adaptive backstepping control methodology. To this aim, a desired active control force is calculated by the master controller to guarantee performance indices of the active suspension system within the allowable constraints. Then, an adaptive backstepping algorithm is applied to solve the problems of nonlinearity and the time constant uncertainty of the hydraulic actuator. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation. Within the context of crashworthiness, Munyazikwiye et al. in the work entitled ‘Optimization of vehicle-to-vehicle frontal crash model based on measured data using genetic algorithm’ presented a mathematical lumped model for vehicle-to-vehicle frontal crash with nonlinear behaviors of spring and damper characteristics. To