Estimation of vehicle tire effective rolling radius and vertical wheel/road contact force

In a vehicle, knowledge of physical wheel/road contact parameters is valuable for the design of dynamic control and active safety systems. In this paper, a new method is designed to estimate the effective rolling radius and the vertical wheel/road contact force using an extended Kalman filter and the Pacejka magic formula. Moreover, it allows the estimation of the longitudinal force, the rolling resistance force, and the longitudinal slip. The method is designed in four blocks. First, a comparison with other research is carried out to validate both the controller and quarter-vehicle model blocks. Then, the blocks of the extended Kalman filter and the Pacejka magic formula are applied to estimate all parameters. The relative mean estimation errors are calculated, and the results show that the developed method is capable of estimating all parameters simultaneously and in real-time with satisfactory accuracy.