Abstract
Nowadays, most passenger cars equipped with automatic transmissions use torque converter clutches to reduce fuel consumption, and recently the slip control scheme of torque converter clutches is widely studied for the expansion of the operating region of torque converter clutches and thus for the further improvement of the fuel economy of vehicles. In this study, the analysis of the torque converter clutch system including the line pressure control unit of the automatic transmission and the actuating hydraulic control unit of the torque converter clutch is performed, and a feedforward controller and a fuzzy logic controller for its slip control are proposed. Also, for the slip controller to use the grade resistance information during control, an observer-based grade resistance estimator is designed. The performance of the designed grade resistance estimator and the slip controller is verified by dynamic simulations, and the effect of the torque converter clutch slip control on the fuel economy is examined using a driving cycle simulation.