CVT Control Design for Heavy Equipment with Simulink

Simscape helps you design heavy equipment. In this video, we're going to look at controlling a power split Continuously Variable Transmission, or CVT. A power split CVT transmits power from the engine along two parallel paths, a hydraulic path and a mechanical path. The mechanical path in this Simscape model includes six clutches that are controlled to select speed ranges in forward and in reverse. The hydraulic path contains a variable displacement pump, which is controlled to select the CVT ratio.

Simulink lets you quickly create, test, and calibrate control algorithms in closed loop tests with a Simscape model of the physical system. Block diagrams can be used to process data from sensors and identify the current state of the vehicle. Clutch control can be defined using state machines, where current state and transition logic are defined visually and animated.

You can use condition tables and action tables to specify which states in the clutches should have in each speed range. All of this can be automatically converted to embedded code to run on your final product. You can download the model we have provided and adapt the algorithms to define the behavior of your heavy equipment.