Modeling and Adaptive Control of an Automotive Torque Converter Clutch System

To meet the ever-increasing demands for fuel economy and performance, the once mundane open-loop mechanical torque converter now includes a mechanical bypass clutch that can improve efficiency by controlling the slip speed between the input and output. To control this highly nonlinear system, this paper investigates several single-input-single-output and multi-input-multi-output one-step-ahead control schemes that include weighted and adaptive variants to achieve a balance between tracking error and controller effort.