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The lightweight design of a vehicle can save manufacturing costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the off-road vehicle and truck, the chassis frame is the most important load-bearing assembly of the separate frame construction vehicle. The frame is one of the most assemblies with great potential to be lightweight optimized. However, most of the vehicle components are mounted on the frame, such as the engine, transmission, suspension, steering system, radiator, and vehicle body. Therefore, boundaries and constraints should be taken into consideration during the optimal process. The finite element (FE) model is widely used to simulate and assess the frame performance. The performance of the frame is determined by the design parameters. As one of the largest components of the vehicle, it has a lot of parameters. To improve the optimum efficiency, sensitivity analysis is used to narrow the range of the variables.

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.

The mountainous roads are rugged and complex, so that the driver can not make accurate judgments on dangerous road conditions. In addition, most heavy vehicles have characteristics of large weight and high center of gravity. The two factors above have caused most of the car accidents in mountain areas. A research shows that 90% of car accidents can be avoided if drivers can respond within 2-3 seconds before the accidents happen. This paper proposes a speed warning scheme for heavy-duty vehicle over the horizon in mountainous area, which can give the drivers enough time to respond to the danger. In the early warning aspect, this system combines the front road information, the vehicle characteristics and real-time information obtained from the vehicle, calculates and forecasts the danger that may happen over the horizon ahead of time, and prompts the driver to control the vehicle speed.

Mountain road winding and bumpy, traffic accidents caused by speeding frequently happened, mainly concentrated on curves. The present curve warning system research are based on Charge-coupled Device, but the existing obstacles, weather , driving at night and road conditions directly affect the accuracy and applicability. The research is of predictability to identify the curves based on the geographic information and can told the driver road information and safety speed ahead of the road according to the commercial vehicle characteristic of load, and the characteristics of the mass center to reduce the incidence of accidents. In this paper, the main research contents include: to estimate forward bend curvature through the node classification method based on the digital map.

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.

In this paper, we propose a method of dynamics simulation and analysis based on superelement modeling to increase the efficiency of dynamics simulation for vehicle body structure. Using this method, a certain multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) body structure was divided into several subsystems, and the modal parameters and frequency response functions of which were obtained through superelement condensation, residual structure solution, and superelement data restoration. The study shows that compared to the traditional modeling method, the computational time for vehicle body modal analysis can be reduced by 6.9% without reducing accuracy; for the purpose of structural optimization, the computational time can be reduced by 87.7% for frequency response analyses of optimizations; consistency between simulation and testing can be achieved on peak frequency points and general trends for the vibration frequency responses of interior front row floors under accelerating conditions.

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.

Path planning system, which is one of driver assistance systems, can calculate the driving paths and estimate the driving time through the road information provided by information source. Traditional path planning systems calculate the driving paths through Dijsktra's algorithm or A* algorithm but only consider the road information from electronic maps. It is not safe enough for operating vehicles because of the insufficient information of vehicle performance as well as the driver's willingness. This study is based on the Dijsktra's algorithm, which comprehensively considered vehicular active safety constraints such as road information, vehicle performance and the driver's willingness to optimize the Dijsktra's algorithm. Then the path planning system can calculate the optimal driving paths that would satisfy the safety requirement of the vehicle. This study used LabVIEW as a visual host computer and MATLAB to calculate dynamic property of the vehicle.

In order to overcome hysteresis and dead zone problems caused by friction for the proportional solenoid valve, and improve rapidity and stability of the pneumatic system on hydraulic retarder, a closed-loop control strategy based on valve coil current was proposed. The high-frequency low-amplitude dither signal was introduced into the proportional solenoid valve. With the proper dither signal, the stick-slip motion of the valve core was transformed into a steady one, and its dynamic performance was improved. Consequently, response time of retarder was reduced during gear changing. The proportional valve coil current was measured as a feedback for a closed-loop control strategy. Combining with the closed-loop strategy, the PI control algorithm was adopted to make sure that valve current was in accordance with the target value. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signal was used for the driving of proportional solenoid valve.

It’s not easy to start the engine in winter, especially in frigid highlands, because the low temperature increases the fuel’s viscosity, decreasing the lubricating oil flow ability and the storage performance of battery. Current electrical heating method can improve the engine starting performance in low temperature condition, but this method adds an external power to the engine, leading to the engine cannot maintain an efficient energy utilization. A warming device using the solar energy is designed to conserve the energy during the daytime, and directly warm up the engine at the time when the engine turns off for a long time, especially during the night. A solar collector installed on the top of the vehicle is used to convert the solar energy to the thermal energy, which is then transferred to the heat accumulator that contain the phase-change medium which can increase the heat storage performance.

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.

Head-up Display (HUD) system can avoid drivers’ distraction on dashboard and effectively reduce collisions caused by emergency events, which is gradually being realized by researchers around the world. However, the current HUD only displays information like speed, fuel consumption, other information like acceleration and braking can’t be displayed yet. This research will use the indicator symbol‘s color and position change to remind drivers to brake or accelerate. Drivers can do driving operation timely and accurately. The system has the advantages of safety, intuition and real-time. The vehicle safe speed is calculated according to the road parameters, like adhesion coefficient and slope, and vehicle parameters, such as vehicle mass and centroid. Then, the appropriate braking operations are obtained by combining the vehicle driving state. The braking information is corresponded to the color and position change of the indicator symbol to prompt the drivers by the HUD interface.

This paper presents a novel application of hydraulic electromagnetic energy-regenerative shock absorber (HESA) into commercial vehicle suspension system and vehicle road performance are simulated by the evaluating indexes (e.g. root-mean-square values of vertical acceleration of sprung mass, dynamic tire-ground contact force, suspension deflection and harvested power; maximum values of pitch angle and roll angle). Firstly, the configuration and working principle of HESA are introduced. Then, the damping characteristics of HESA and the seven-degrees-of-freedom vehicle dynamics were modeled respectively before deriving the dynamic characteristics of a vehicle equipped with HESA. The control current is fixed at 7A to match the similar damping effect of traditional damper on the basis of energy conversion method of nonlinear shock absorber.

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.

This paper introduces two new types of basic components (an Electro-Hydraulic Tube and a Hydraulic Tube) which when connected in an appropriate manner can control flow and pressure for many applications; in addition, one of the devices is readily interfacable to a microprocessor for external control. Some background information about the basic concept and the operation of the two components is introduced. Some of the experimental characteristics will be illustrated and several basic circuit examples will be presented to show how the concept can be implemented. The Electro-Hydraulic Integrated Block (EHIB) and Circuit (EHIC) will be introduced followed by a discussion of the advantages and potential of the EHIC concept.

The development of high precision flow divider/combiner valves has received considerable attention by the authors over the past decade. Several different valve designs for division and combination of flow have been designed which display small flow dividing/combining error (1-2%) when compared to conventional designs (2-10%). Recent studies have improved upon the design in order to reduce cost, weight and complexity of the valve. This paper will present the latest of the authors research into the development of a high precision, autoregulated flow divider/combiner valve with an integral shuttle valve. The autoregulator extends the operating range of the integrated flow divider/combiner valve (for errors less than 2 %) to 10-50 lpm compared to 30-50 lpm for the unregulated valve.

A flow divider valve is a device which allows a single stream of fluid to be split into two paths according to a predetermined ratio and independent of variations or differences in the load pressures. A flow combiner valve combines two paths of fluid into one stream such that the ratio of the flow rates coming into the valve remains independent of any variation or difference between the inlet pressures. This paper describes the design, operation and performance of an integrated flow divider/combiner valve. This design maintains the small flow dividing/combining error of high precision valves (less than 1.5% at rated flow) but incorporates the shuttle valve into the main spool system. This new design reduces the weight of the valve by 20% reducing the cost by approximately 10%. The new structure simplifies the construction of high precision valves and reduces a source of flow dividing/combining error (leakage).

The brake performance is one of the most important performances in the automotive active safety, and it is the main measure of automotive active safety. Thus, to develop a platform for the braking system is quite significant. Based on the object-oriented technology, the platform for braking system is developed by making use of Visual C++ 6.0 development tool. By using the VC++ development tool and doing secondary development on other softwares, the software possesses powerful features, such as brake plan selection, performance calculation, parametric modeling, finite element analysis and kinematics simulation, etc. An initial brake system can be designed, calculated and analyzed all in one. The living instance shows that the platform has friendly user interfaces, powerful functions and it can improve the precision and efficiency of brake design. The platform has been of great applied value and can also positively promote the design automation of vehicle's braking system.

The basic principle of wavelet transform is presented and the method of wavelet theory is used in vibration signal analysis of vehicle in this paper. The vibration signals which generated in the locations such as cab floor, engine, transmission, band spring and frame under the usual work condition are measured by the vibration test system. The vibration signals are decomposed with the principle of wavelet decomposition at level six, and eigenvectors of signal energy are gained. According to the correlation coefficient of eigenvectors of signal energy distribution, two signals correlativity is determined. It could be an effective method that identificate the main vibration source.

The mountain roads are curved and complicated, with undulating terrain and large distance between charging stations. Compared with traditional powered vehicles, in addition to safety issues, pure electric vehicles also need to deal with the driving range issue. At present, the relevant researches on automobile driving in mountainous areas mainly focus on the driving safety of traditional fuel oil vehicles when going uphill and downhill, while there are few researches on the driving planning of pure electric commercial vehicles on curved slope road. This paper presents a speed planning method for pure electric commercial vehicles based on vehicle-road collaboration technology. First, establish the vehicle dynamics model, analyze the vehicle dynamics characteristics when passing the downhill curve, calculate the safe speed range of the vehicle when passing the downhill curve, and establish the safe speed model of the downhill curve.