Review of state of the art in active aerodynamic control research for vehicles

Abstract Various active safety systems have been developed and applied to improve the driving safety of road vehicles under emergency scenarios. However, the functions of these active safety systems are limited due to the forces saturation between the tires and the road under high lateral accelerations or on low adhesion roads. To further enhance the safety of high-speed vehicles, the active aerodynamic control system was proposed and studied by engineers and researchers. An overview of the state of the art and present status of active aerodynamic control research for vehicles is presented in this paper. The influence of the active aerodynamic control on the dynamic properties of road vehicles, vehicle models used for active aerodynamic control systems, the control system and controller are summarized in this paper. The future research efforts are discussed. The paper is to provide some guidance for the further investigations of the active aerodynamic control system.