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A passive thermal management system (TMS) using composite phase change material (PCM) for large-capacity, rectangular lithium-ion batteries is designed. A battery module consisting of six Li-ion cells connected in series was investigated as a basic unit. The passive TMS for the module has three configurations according to the contact area between cells and the composite PCM, i.e., surrounding, front-contacted and side-contacted schemes. Firstly, heat generation rate of the battery cell was calculated using the Bernardi equation based on experimentally measured heat source terms (i.e. the internal resistance and the entropy coefficient). Physical and thermal properties such as density, phase change temperature, latent heat and thermal conductivity of the composite PCM were also obtained by experimental methods. Thereafter, thermal response of the battery modules with the three TMS configurations was simulated using 3D finite element analysis (FEA) modeling in ANSYS Fluent.

CuO-water nanofluids was utilized as heat transfer medium in the cooling system of the diesel engine. By using CFD-Fluent software, for 0.5%, 1%, 3% and 5% mass concentration of nanofluids, 3-dimensional numerical simulation about flow and heat transfer process in the cooling system of engine was actualized. According to stochastic particle tracking in turbulent flow, for solid-liquid two phase flow discrete phase, the moving track of nanoparticles was traced. By this way, for CuO nanoparticles of different mass concentration nanofliuds in the cooling jacket of diesel engine, the results of the concentration distribution, velocity distribution, internal energy variation, resident time, total heat transfer and variation of total pressure reduction between inlet and outlet were ascertained.

Turbochargers improve performance in internal combustion engines. Due to low production costs, TC assemblies are supported on floating ring bearings. In current lubrication analysis of floating ring bearing, inner and outer oil film are usually supposed to be adiabatic. The heat generated by frictional power is carried out by the lubricant flow. In reality, under real operating conditions, there existed heat transfer between the inner and outer film. In this paper, the lubrication performance of floating ring bearing when considering heat transfer between inner film and outer film is studied. The lubrication model of the floating ring is established and the heat transferred through the ring between the inner and outer film is calculated. The calculation results show that heat flow between the inner and outer film under different outer film eccentricity ratio and rotate ratio has a large difference.

In order to study the fast filling problem of large-capacity on-board hydrogen storage tank for highway passenger cars, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation model of 134L large-capacity hydrogen storage tank was established. By simulating different pre-cooling temperatures and mass flow rates, the temperature distribution and thermal transmission in the tank were observed. Due to the large ratio of length to diameter of the hydrogen tank, the temperature distribution is extremely uneven during the whole filling process, and the high temperature area is mainly concentrated in the tank tail. And the heat transfer between the gas and the tank wall is not obvious under the low and constant mass flow rate. The temperature rise process during the whole filling process under different mass flow conditions was simulated to satisfy the highest safe temperature limit.

Water and thermal management is an essential issue that influences performance and durability of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Water content in membrane decides its ionic conductivity and membrane swelling favors the ionic conductivity, resulting in decreases in the membrane’s ohmic resistance and improvement in the output voltage. However, if excessive liquid water can’t be removed out of cell quickly, it will fill in the pores of catalyst layer (CL) and gas diffusion layer (GDL) then flooding may occur. It is essential to keep the water content in membrane at a proper level. In this work, a transient isothermal one-dimensional model is developed to investigate effects of the relative humidity of inlet gas and cell temperature on performance of a PEMFC.

The thermophysical parameters and amount of composite phase change materials (PCMs) have decisive influence on the thermal control effects of thermal management systems (TMSs). At the same time, the various thermophysical parameters of the composite PCM are interrelated. For example, increasing the thermal conductivity is bound to mean a decrease in the latent heat of phase change, so a balance needs to be achieved between these parameters. In this paper, a prismatic LiFePO4 battery cell cooled by composite PCM is comprehensively analyzed by changing the phase change temperature, thermal conductivity and amount of composite PCM. The influence of the composite PCM parameters on the cooling and temperature homogenization effect of the TMS is analyzed. which can give useful guide to the preparation of composite PCMs and design of the heat transfer enhancement methods for TMSs.

A computational study was conducted in order to characterize the heat transfers in a sedan vehicle underbody and the exhaust system. A steady-state analysis with consideration for both the radiation and conjugate heat transfers was undertaken using the High-Reynolds formulation of the k-epsilon turbulence model with standard wall function and the DO model for the radiation heat transfer. All three mechanisms of heat transfer, i.e., convection, conduction, and radiation, were included in the analysis. The convective heat transfer due to turbulent fluid motion was modeled with the assumption of constant turbulent Prandtl number; and heat conduction was solved directly for both fluid and solid.

As one of the most crucial components in electric vehicles, power batteries generate abundant heat during charging and discharging processes. Thermal management system (TMS), which is designed to keep the battery cells within an optimum temperature range and to maintain an even temperature distribution from cell to cell, is vital for the high efficiency, long calendar life and reliable safety of these power batteries. With the desirable features of low system complexity, light weight, high energy efficiency and good battery thermal uniformity, thermal management using composite phase change materials (PCMs) has drawn great attention in the past fifteen years. In the hope of supplying helpful guidelines for the design of the PCM-based TMSs, this work begins with the summarization of the most commonly applied heat transfer enhancement methods (i.e., the use of thermally conductive particles, metal fin, expanded graphite matrix and metal foam) for PCMs by different researchers.

Jet-wake flow and secondary flows are undesirable in torque converters as they are responsible for flow losses and flow nonuniformity; that is, jet-wake flow and secondary flows negatively affect the torque converter performance. Therefore, it is very important to investigate and minimize the undesirable flows to decrease flow losses in torque converter. However, the existing studies are limited to employ geometry design parameter modifications rather than focusing on the actual causes and intrinsic physical mechanism that generate the flows to reduce the flow losses. In this paper, Calculation model of a torque converter is presented first and a three dimensional CFD code was used to simulate the internal flow field of a torque converter. The simulation results coincide with experimental measurements, which verifies the validity of the method. Based on flow field calculation results, the internal flow field of impeller, turbine and stator were analyzed, respectively.

Micro electric vehicle has gained increasingly popularity among the public due to its compact size and reasonable price in China in recent years. Since design factors that influence the power of electric vehicle drive-motor like maximum speed, acceleration time and so on are not fixed but varies in certain scopes. Therefore, to optimize the process of matching drive-motor’s power, qualitatively and quantitatively studies should be done to determine the optimal parameter combination and improve the design efficiency. In this paper, three basic operating conditions including driving at top speed, ascending and acceleration are considered in the matching process. And the Sobol’ method of global sensitivity analysis (GSA) is applied to evaluate the importance of design factors to the drive-motor’s power in each working mode.

In this paper we present a path following control design for a six-wheel skid-steering vehicle. Contrary to the common approaches that impose non-holonomic constraints, a dynamic vehicle model is established based on a pseudo-static tire model, which uses tire slip to determine tire forces. Our control system admits a modular structure, where a motion controller computes the reference vehicle yaw rate and reference vehicle speed and a dynamics controller tracks these signals. A robust nonlinear control law is designed to track the reference wheel speeds determined by the dynamics controller with proved stability properties. Saturated control techniques are employed in designing the reference yaw rate, which ensures the magnitude of the reference yaw rate does not violate the constraint from the ground-tire adhesion. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed path following control design.

In this study, effects of altitude on free diesel spray morphology, macroscopic spray characteristics and air-fuel mixing process were investigated. The diesel spray visualization experiment using high-speed photography was performed in a constant volume chamber which reproduced the injection diesel-like thermodynamic conditions of a heavy-duty turbocharged diesel engine operating at sea level and 1000 m, 2000 m, 3000 m and 4500 m above sea level. The results showed that the spray morphology became narrower and longer at higher altitude, and small vortex-like structures were observed on the downstream spray periphery. Spray penetration increased and spray angle decreased with increasing altitude. At altitudes of 0 m, 1000 m, 2000 m, 3000 m and 4500 m, the spray penetration at 1.45 ms after start of injection (ASOI) were 79.54 mm, 80.51 mm, 81.49 mm, 83.29 mm and 88.92 mm respectively, and the spray angle were 10.9°, 10.8°, 10.7°, 10.4°and 9.8° respectively.

The mechanical claw is an important functional part of intelligent sanitation vehicles. Its performance significantly influences the functional reliability and structural safety of intelligent sanitation vehicles. The load of the trash changes extensively during the work of the mechanical claw. Hence, a comprehensive consideration of structural uncertainty during designing is needed to meet performance requirements. Uncertainty optimization design should be applied to reduce the sensitivity of structural performance to uncertain factors and ensure the robust performance of the mechanical paw structure. In this study, a numerical model of the mechanical claw of novel intelligent sanitation vehicles is established first in SolidWorks, and a finite element model is built by Optistruct. Based on the analysis of uncertain load factors of the mechanical claw, a robust mathematical model of uncertain factors is established by the Gauss-Chebyshev and Smolyak algorithm.

Chinese National projects “13th Five Year Plan” and “Made in China 2025” have both put forward a goal of developing Intelligent and Connected Vehicles(ICV). Shanghai is a typical city of automobile industry which spearhead the development of China’s ICV industry. After the adjustment and transition of industrial structure, Shanghai has initially formed the industrialization layout of ICV covering core areas including environmental perception, intelligent decision-making, actuator, human-computer interaction and vehicle integration. However, currently Shanghai is still in the beginning stage and there exists a large gap with world advanced level in both the core technology and marketization. This article is based on former qualitative survey combined with quantitative analysis which uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) method to objectively evaluate the status quo and development trend of Shanghai’s ICV.

Engine compartment thermal management can achieve energy saving and emission reduction. The structural design of the components in the engine compartment affects the thermal fluid flow performance, which in turn affects the thermal management performance. In this paper, based on the phenomenon that the surface of the parts in the engine compartment is abnormally high due to design defects of an SUV engine compartment bottom shield, the engine compartment is modeled and analyzed by CFD using the software STAR-CCM+. It is not conducive to the heat dissipation, so the bottom shield needs to be redesigned. To redesign the shape of the bottom shield, four dimensions and one coordinate value were selected as the design parameters, and the oil pan maximum surface temperature was selected as the optimization target. The Latin hypercube sampling method was used to sample the space uniformly, and the experimental design plan was constructed and simulated.

Improving the heat dissipation performance of the engine radiator in the real working environment is of great significance to the cooling of the engines. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of the radiator’s geometric parameters on its heat dissipation performance in the cooling module environment and optimize the geometric parameters to improve the heat dissipation performance of the radiator. Based on the performance data obtained from relevant component tests and the engine thermal balance test, the simulation model of the engine thermal management system is established, and the reliability of the model is verified. The heat dissipation performances of the single radiator and the radiator in the cooling module are compared by using the validated model.

The layout of component in the engine compartment affects the fluid flow performance, thereby affects the thermal management performance. Based on the fluid flow performance in the engine compartment of an SUV, this paper proposes local optimization plans of the cooling module—moving downward the oil cooler and forward the intercooler, tilting an angle of the cooling module and shifting the fan. This paper took the fan center temperature as the optimization goal and set three levels for the four factors. It was found that the deviation of the fan has the most significant impact on fan center temperature among four factors. Then we discovered that the interaction between the factors has a significant impact on the air intake volume of the cooling module.

The temperature of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is the key factor restricting fuel cell’s performance. A deep understanding of temperature on stack voltage consistency and transient characteristics is necessary for improving the output performance of fuel cell. In this paper, the variation trend of consistency and transient characteristics of 20kW PEMFC stack at different temperatures is studied by experiment. In consistency, the amplitude of voltage changes and voltage difference (voltage coefficient variation σV) under different thermal loading conditions is examined. In transient characteristics, discussing the trends of transient voltage at different thermal loading. As the result, once the stack temperature increases from 65 °C to 70 °C, the stack performance and dynamic response are significantly improved, which may be caused by the rise in temperature promoting the establishment of the internal quality transmission channel.

Diesel engine is vital in the industry for its characteristics of low fuel consumption, high-torque, reliability, and durability. Existing diesel engine technology has reached the upper limit. It is difficult to break through the fuel consumption and emission of diesel engines. VVA (Variable Valve Actuation) is a new technology in the field of the diesel engines. In this paper, GT-Suite and ANN (artificial neural network) model are established based on engine experimental data and DoE simulation results. By inputting Intake Valve Opening crake angle (IVO), Intake Valve Angle Multiplier (IVAM) and Exhaust Valve Angle Multiplier (EVAM) into the ANN Model, and by using SA (simulated annealing algorithm), the optimized results of intake and exhaust valve lift under the target conditions are obtained.

During current design process of vehicle engine exhaust system, the frequently-used approach mainly concerns an individual component, which usually results in not meeting the overall design requirements or unreasonable design parameters. Here a concept of comprehensive evaluation metrics for vehicle engine exhaust system was established, of which a new weight factor assignment method was proposed, named change rate method, as the core of evaluation system to be especially studied. Taking muffler as an instance, six weight factor assignment schemes were adopted to compare with each other. And the rationality and practicability of the change rate assignment method was verified by the muffler noise experiments. The results show that, the change rate method makes the weight assignment more scientific and rigorous. And the new method can reflect the wishes of designers and completely displays the performance comparison and evaluation between schemes.