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To prevent braking recession, heavy commercial vehicles are often equipped with fluid auxiliary braking devices, such as hydraulic retarder. Hydraulic retarder can convert the vehicle’s kinetic energy to the fluid heat energy, which can enormously alleviate the main brake’s workload. The traditional hydraulic retarder can provide enough braking torque but has a delay during the braking. In this paper, a new type of magnetorheological fluid (MR fluid) hydraulic retarder is introduced by replacing the traditional fluid with magnetorheological fluid because of its linear braking torque and quick response. By changing the magnetic field intensity, it is easier to control the braking torque than the traditional hydraulic retarder. The rise of magnetorheological fluid temperature during the braking period will reduce the hydraulic retarder’s performance.

Driving comfort is one of the most important indexes for automobile comfort. Driving posture comfort is closely related to the drivers' joint angles and joint torques. In present research, a new method is proposed to identify the most comfortable driving posture based on studying the relation between drivers' joint angles and joint torques. In order to truly reflect a driving situation, the accurate human driving model of 50 percent of the size of Chinese male is established according to the human body database of RAMSIS firstly. Biomechanical model based on accurate human driving model is also developed to analyze and obtain dynamic equations of human driving model by employing Kane method. The joint torque-angle curves of drivers' upper and lower limbs during holding wheel or pedal operation can be obtained through dynamic simulation in the MATLAB. Through curve-fitting analysis, the minimum joint torque of a driver' limb and the optimal joint angel can be found.

Magnetorheological fluid (MRF) is used as the transmission medium of the hydraulic retarder. The rheological properties are regulated by changing the magnetic field to achieve accurate control of the retarder's braking torque. Under the action of the external magnetic field, the flow structure and performance of the MRF retarder will be changed in a short time. The apparent viscosity coefficient increases by several orders of magnitude, the fluidity deteriorates and the heat generated by the brake cannot be transferred through the liquid circulation, which will affect the braking torque of the retarder. Changing the surface area of the stator also has an influence on the braking torque of the retarder and the wall heat dissipation. In this study, the relationship between the braking torque of the MRF retarder and the stator surface area of the retarder was analyzed.

In order to avoid the braking recession on heavy commercial vehicles caused by the long-distance continuous braking of the main brake, the hydraulic retarder is widely used as an important brake auxiliary device in various heavy commercial vehicles to improve the vehicle safety. However, the hydraulic retarder not only has the advantages of large braking torque and good stability, but also has the disadvantages of poor retarding ability at low rotating speed, braking lag and difficulty in accurately controlling the braking torque. This paper introduces a new type of hydraulic retarder. The new retarder replaces the oil in the retarder with magnetorheological fluid and applies a magnetic field in the retarder arrangement space, so that slows down the vehicle by using the rheological properties of the magnetorheological fluid under the magnetic field.

Hydraulic retarder has been widely applied on military vehicles and heavy commercial vehicles because of it could provide great brake torque and has lasting working time [1]. In order to reduce driver's frequent actions in braking process and prevent hydraulic retarder system from overheating, it is need to apply constant braking torque control, this control target has a strict requirement to hydraulic control system design. Many parameters often require repeated test to determine, which increases the R&D cost and extends the research cycle. This paper tries to find a time-efficient research method of hydraulic retarder control system through studying on a heavy military vehicle hydraulic retarder system. Hydraulic retarder model is set up through test data. The hydraulic control system is built based on AMESim. Controller model is set up based on PID control. The whole vehicle brake model is built based on MATLAB/Simulink.

Automotive Front Lighting System(AFS) can receive the steering signal and the vehicular speed signal to adjust the position of headlamps automatically. AFS will provide drivers more information of front road to protect drivers safe when driving at night. AFS works when there is a steering signal input. However, drivers often need the front road's information before they turn the steering wheel when vehicles are going to go through a sharp corner, AFS will not work in such a situation. This paper studied how to optimize the working time of AFS based on GIS (Geographic Information System) and GPS(Geographic Information System) to solve the problem. This paper analyzed the process of the vehicle is about to go through a corner. Low beams and high beams were discussed respectively.

With the continuous increasing requirements of commercial vehicle weight and speed on highway transportation, conventional friction brake is difficult to meet the braking performance. To ensure the driving safety of the vehicle in the hilly region, the eddy current retarder (ECR) has been widely used due to its fast response, lower prices and convenient installation. ECR brakes the vehicle through the electromagnetic force generated by the current, and converted vehicle mechanical energy into heat through magnetic field. Air cooling structure is often used in the traditional ECR and cooling performance is limited, which causes low braking torque, thermal recession, and low reliability and so on. The water jacket has been equipped outside the eddy current region in this study, and the electric ECR is cooled through the water circulating in the circuit, which prolongs its working time.

The hydraulic retarder is an auxiliary braking device generally equipped on commercial vehicles. Its oil temperature change influences the brake performance of hydraulic retarder. The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is a good means to recover exhausted heat. Moreover, it can cool oil and stably control oil temperature with the help of heat absorption related with evaporation. Comprehensively considering the heat-producing characteristics of hydraulic retarder and the temperature control demand, the aimed boundary conditions are determined. Also the changing rules about the working medium flow rate are obtained. In this work, the heat-producing properties of hydraulic retarder under different conditions and the oil external circulating performance is firstly analyzed. By researching the system’s adaptation to the limiting conditions, the aimed temperature to control is prescribed.

Fluid auxiliary braking devices can provide braking torque through hydraulic damping, fluid auxiliary braking devices can also convert vehicular inertia energy into transmission fluid heat energy during the braking, which can effectively alleviate the work pressure of the main brake. Traditional hydraulic auxiliary braking devices use transmission fluids to transmit torque, however, there is a certain lag effect during the braking. The magnetorheological fluid (MR fluid) can also be used to transmit torque because it has the advantages of controlling braking torque linearly and responding fast to the magnetic field changed. The temperature of MR fluid will increase when the vehicle is engaged in continuous braking. MR fluid temperature changes will cause a bad influence on the efficiency stability of auxiliary braking.

Using friction brakes for long time can increase easily its temperature and lower vehicle brake performance in the downhill process. The drivers' hysteretic perception to future driving condition could mislead them to stop untimely the engine brake, and some other auxiliary braking devices are designed to increase the brake power for reduction of the friction brake torque. The decompression engine brake has complex structure and high cost, and the application of eddy current retarder or hydraulic retarder on the commercial vehicles is mainly limited to their cost and mass. In this paper, an innovative brake guidance system for commercial vehicles with coordinated friction brakes and engine brake is introduced to guide the drivers to minimize the use of the friction brakes on the downhill with consideration of future driving conditions, which is aimed at releasing the engine brake potential fully and controlling the friction brake temperature in safe range.

In order to ensure driving safety, heavy vehicles are often equipped with hydraulic retarder, which provides sustained, stable braking torque and converts the vehicle kinetic energy into heat taken away by the cooling system when traveling on a long downhill. The conventional hydraulic retarder braking torque is modulated by adjusting the liquid filling rate, which leads to slow response and difficult control. In this paper, a new kind of magnetorheological (MR) fluid hydraulic retarder is designed by replacing the traditional transmission oil with MR fluid and arranging the excitation coils outside the working chamber. The braking torque can be controlled by the fluid viscosity of MR fluid with the variation of magnetic field. Compared with the traditional hydraulic retarder, the system has the advantages of fast response, easy control and high adjustment sensitivity.

Downhill mountain roads are the accident prone sections because of their complexity and variety. Drivers rely more on driving experience and it is very easy to cause traffic accidents due to the negligence or the judgment failure. Traditional active safety systems, such as ABS, having subjecting to the driver's visual feedback, can’t fully guarantee the downhill driving safety in complex terrain environments. To enhance the safety of vehicles in the downhill, this study combines the characteristics of vehicle dynamics and the geographic information. Thus, through which the drivers could obtain the safety speed specified for his/her vehicle in the given downhill terrains and operate in advance to reduce traffic accidents due to driver's judgment failure and avoid the brake overheating and enhance the safety of vehicles in the downhill.

Systematic research on dynamic model, simulation analyses, prototype production and bench tests have been carried out in recent years on the most popular energy-harvesting shock absorbers-the mechanical motion rectifier (MMR), and the hydraulic-electromagnetic energy-regenerative shock absorber (HESA). This paper presents a novel application of the HESA into bogie system of railway vehicles. In order to study the differences of suspension performance and energy harvesting property between first suspension system and second suspension system of the application, simulation models are built in AMESim to make comparison studies on the different department suspensions caused by the nonlinear damping behaviors of the HESA. The simulation results show that the system can effectively reduce the impact between wheel and rail tracks, while maintaining good potential to recycle vibratory energy.

The thermal management system of the water medium retarder using engine coolant (water and ethylene glycol) as transmission medium, omits oil-water heat exchanger in the structure. When the hydraulic retarder is operated, the valve is connected with the retarder and water pump, and then the engine coolant enters the working chamber. The kinetic energy of the vehicle is converted into internal energy of the coolant, and the heat is discharged to the external environment through the engine thermal management system. The braking torque of the water medium hydraulic retarder is determined by the water medium flow rate in the working chamber. The smaller the valve opening degree, the greater the braking torque and the faster the heating transmission fluid. Small valve opening is not conducive to the loss of heat. It will affect the normal working of the engine and hydraulic retarder.

When driving in mountainous areas, vehicles often encounter long downhill sections. Due to the large mass of bus and the drum brake with poor heat dissipation effect, it is easy for bus to produce braking thermal decay in long downhill section, which makes the vehicle out of control and causes safety accidents. The braking methods of parallel hybrid electric bus include drum braking, engine braking and regenerative braking, whose torque models are established in this paper. The coasting test in Trucksim is used to verify the correctness of the engine braking torque model. Based on coupling braking torque curve with vehicle speed in different gradient, the stable speed is determined and the shift strategy is proposed. The temperature rise model of brake drum is established to analyze the temperature change of brake drum during long downhill. Then, according to the ramp data of G22 freeway, the above models are simulated.

In the process of truck overload and over-limit detection, it is necessary to detect the characteristics of the vehicle's size, type, and wheel number. In addition, in some vehicle vision-based load recognition systems, the vehicle load can be calculated by detecting the vibration frequency of specific parts of the vehicle or the change in the length of the suspension during the vehicle's forward process. Therefore, it is essential to quickly and accurately identify vehicle features through the camera. This paper proposes a vehicle feature recognition method based on image semantic segmentation and Python, which can identify the length, height, number of wheels and vibration frequency at specific parts of the vehicle based on the vehicle driving video captured by the roadside camera.

The tank truck has a wide range of application. When the liquid in the tank is not fully loaded, the lateral movement of the liquid in the tank will shift the center of gravity of the tank truck and make the vehicle less safe. It is easy to roll over when the tank truck is turning. This study combines the vehicle dynamic characteristics and geographic information, which gives the driver safe speed and safe braking distance tips before turning, to reduce the traffic accidents caused by driver's misjudgment. The dynamic model of the tank truck is established, through collecting the real-time information of the vehicle, the vehicle load and braking torque are calculated by the relevant dynamic model. The system needs to measure the deviation of the center of gravity in the tank truck movement process, and the deviation of the center of gravity has a great influence on the safety speed.

The hydraulic retarder used in commercial vehicles can provide hydraulic damping to generate braking torque, reducing the pressure of the braking system on the slope section and increasing the safety. In this paper, the magnetorheological fluid with fast magnetic field reflection characteristics is used to increase the response speed of the hydraulic retarder, which can effectively reduce the response time of the hydraulic retarder. In this paper, the influence of the change of circumferential magnetic field on the braking torque of the magnetorheological fluid retarder is studied.

In order to perform differential control instead of the mechanical differential and improve the steering performance of distributed electric vehicles, a two-level differential speed steering control strategy is proposed. Firstly, an upper-layer controller to track the yaw rate is designed based on PID feedback and 3-D lookup table model, which could shorten the response time and reduce the impact of model parameters mismatch. Then, in order to improve the robustness to external disturbances and parameter uncertainties, a lower-layer controller to track the wheel speed is proposed based on integral sliding mode control. Moreover, three simulations are conducted to validate the proposed strategy. The first simulation results indicate that the driving torques of the inner and outer wheels are distributed properly to avoid wheel slip. In the second simulation, when the conventional steering system fails, the proposed control strategy could avoid vehicle losing steering function.

The hydraulic retarder, which is an auxiliary brake device for enhancing traffic safety, has been widely used in kinds of heavy commercial vehicles. When the vehicle equipped with the retarder is traveling in non-braking state, the transmission loss would be caused because of the stirring air between working wheels of the rotor and the stator no matter if the retarder connects in parallel or in series with the transmission [1]. This paper introduces an elaborate hydraulic retarder air-friction reduction system (AFRS) which consists of a vacuum generating module and pneumatic control module. AFRS works to reduce the air friction by decreasing the gas density between working wheels when the retarder is in non-braking state. The pneumatic control model of hydraulic retarder is built first. Then various driving conditions are considered to verify the performance of the AFRS. The stability of the AFRS is analyzed based on the complete driveline model.