In order for leading industrial companies to remain competitive, the process of product developement constantly needs to improve. In order to shorten development time -- that is the time from idea to product -- simulations of products in-house is becoming a popular method. This method saves money and time since expensive prototypes become unnecessary. Today the calibration of steering gears is done in test vehicles by experienced test drivers. This is a time consuming process that is very costly because of expensive test vehicles. This report investigates possibilities and difficulties with transfering the calibrations from field to rig. A steering rig has been integrated with a car simulation program. Comparisons between simulation in the loop (SIL) and hardware in the loop (HIL) have been made and differences between different configurations of steering gears have been evaluated. An automatic process including calibration of parameters, testing and analysis of the test results has been implemented. The work laid the foundation of calibration of steering parameters and showed correlation between calibration parameters and objective metrics.

La commande du système de Direction Assistée Electrique (DAE) est un défi majeur en raison de ses multiples objectifs et de la nécessitée de réaliser plusieurs mesures pour la mettre en oeuvre. La commande doit assurer : le suivi du couple d’assistance de référence tout en assurant la stabilité du système et sans introduire des retards, l’atténuation des vibrations provoquées par chacune des entrées du système, la transmission des informations de la route au conducteur pour un bon confort et une meilleure sensation de conduite, l’amélioration de la performance de retour au centre. La commande doit également être robuste vis-à-vis des erreurs de modélisation, des incertitudes des paramètres, et des perturbations extérieures. En outre, la mise en oeuvre de la commande nécessite plusieurs mesures telles que : l’angle au volant, l’angle du moteur, la vitesse du moteur, le couple conducteur et le couple de réaction de la route. / The control of Electric Power Assisted Steering (EPAS) system is a challengingproblem due to the multiple objectives and the need of several pieces of information to implement the control. The control objectives are to generate assist torque with fast responses to driver’s torque commands, insure system stability, attenuate vibrations, transmit the road information to the driver, and improve the steering wheel returnability and free control performance. The control must also be robust against modeling errors and parameter uncertainties. In addition, several pieces of information are required to implement the control, such as steering wheel angle, motor velocity, driver torque and road reaction torque.