Integrated Plant and Control Design of a Continuously Variable Transmission

This paper presents an optimization framework to design the components and the controller of a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) in an integrated manner. Specifically, we aim at reducing the mass of the transmission and the leakage losses that occur in the system. To do so, we first formulate the joint plant and control design problem including the corresponding objectives and constraints. Thereafter, we propose a proportional integral structure for the design of the CVT ratio control. The combined plant and control design problem is formulated as a nonlinear multi-objective optimization problem, and is simultaneously solved using an interior point optimization method. We evaluate the obtained design on the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC) as well as on more aggressive driving scenarios, and demonstrate that the optimized CVT design is always capable of realizing the required driving performance. Additionally, we study the impact of the plant design parameters on the control performance by analyzing the coupling strength between the subproblems. Thereby, the pulley radius is found to have the strongest influence in the resulting leakage losses that occur at the variator level. Finally, leveraging the presented design framework, we show that up to 13% and 18% reduction in the CVT variator mass and on leakage losses, respectively, can be achieved without compromising the desired ratio trajectory over a representative dynamic driving cycle.