Patent ID: 6547699
Filing Date: 2003-04-15
Classification: B60W,F16D,Y02T,Y10S,Y10T

Abstract:
A method of diagnosing a malfunction of a clutch actuator that actuates the engagement and disengagement of a clutch of a motor vehicle with a transmission and a control unit, comprising the steps of:a) feeding an input command signal representing a desired amount of clutch engagement from the control unit to the clutch actuator and simultaneously feeding the input command signal to an emulation model of the clutch-actuator; measuring a clutch-actuator position and generating an actual position signal corresponding to the measured clutch-actuator position; b) measuring a clutch-actuator position and generating an actual position signal corresponding to the measured clutch-actuator position; c) calculating in the emulation model a theoretically estimated clutch-actuator position based on the input command signal, and generating an estimated position signal corresponding to the theoretically estimated clutch-actuator position; d) feeding the actual position signal and the estimated position signal to a first comparator unit which, in turn, generates a first comparison signal representing the result of a comparison of said actual and estimated position signals; e) feeding the first comparison signal to a first arithmetic unit which evaluates the first comparison signal and, based on said evaluation, generates a first status signal that is characteristic of the clutch-actuator's ability to function properly.