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It is well-known that, compared with automatic transmissions (ATs), continuously variable transmission (CVT) shows advantages in fuel saving due to its continuous shift manner, since this feature enables the engine to operate in the efficiency-optimized region. However, as the AT gear number increases and the ratio gap narrows, this advantage of CVT is challenged. In this paper, a comparative study on fuel economy for a CVT based vehicle and a 9-speed automatic transmission (AT) based vehicle is proposed. The features of CVT and AT are analyzed and ratio control strategies for both the CVT and 9-speed AT based vehicles are designed from the view point of vehicle fuel economy, respectively. For the 9-speed AT, an optimal gear shift map is constructed. With this gear shift map, the optimal gear is selected as vehicle velocity and driving condition vary.

Butanol, which is a renewable biofuel, has been regarded as a promising alternative fuel for internal combustion engines. When blended with diesel and applied to pilot ignited natural gas engines, butanol has the capability to achieve lower emissions without sacrifice on thermal efficiency. However, high blend ratio of butanol is limited by its longer ignition delay caused by the higher latent heat and higher octane number, which restricts the improvement of emission characteristics. In this paper, the potential of increasing butanol blend ratio by adding hot exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is investigated. 3D CFD model based on a detailed kinetic mechanism was built and validated by experimental results of natural gas engine ignited by diesel/butanol blends. The effects of hot EGR is then revealed by the simulation results of the combustion process, heat release traces and also the emissions under different diesel/butanol blend ratios.

Recovering the braking energy and reusing it can significantly improve the fuel economy of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).The battery ability of recovering electricity limits the improvement of the regenerative braking performance. As one way to solve this problem, the technology of brake-by-wire can be adopted in the HEVs to use the recovery dynamically. The use of high-power electrical equipment, such as electromechanical brake (EMB), is working in the form of brake-by-wire. Due to the nature of EMB, there exists an obvious coupling relationship between the energy flow and brake force distribution. In this paper, a brake force distribution controller is proposed in HEV with EMB, which can maximize braking energy recovery, compared with the conventional distribution control without EMB. Meanwhile, an energy flow strategy working with the distribution controller is designed, which is less limited to the performance of the battery.

Turbochargers can improve vehicle dynamic performance and fuel economy and are applied widely nowadays. Due to the existence of turbocharger delay effect, acceleration delay and insufficient combustion are its disadvantages. By collecting high pressure gas which generates from the inertia of the turbine in the intake passage when the vehicle slows down, the gas can be supplied for the shortage while the vehicle is accelerating, which can reduce turbocharger delay effect directly. However, turbocharger delay effect changes a little at high speed and low speed which is subjected to the air inflation and short air-release time. This paper adds a set of pressure booster device on the existing inflating-deflating device, whose thermal energy comes from the compressed air and lubricating oil, to facilitate pressure increasing in inflating-deflating device and help the chamber change sooner, which avails to relieve the delay effect.

For series hybrid electric vehicles (SHEV), rule-based strategies are realistic and powerful in real-time applications. However, the previous rule-based strategy cannot strike a balance between the best fuel economy and the best battery performance while maintaining the advantages of real-time applications. In order to obtain higher efficiency and reduce battery consumption, we have developed an adaptive hybrid thermostat strategy. On the basis of maintaining the load leveling of the thermostat strategy, the threshold-changing mechanism is added to realize the adaptive adjustment of the engine starting power under different SOC conditions, so as to achieve the goal of prolonging the battery life. In addition, the more fuel-efficient emergency handling rules designed to further reduce comprehensive fuel consumption.

On-road testing of driving performance of the urban bus was carried out, and a representative urban bus driving cycle was developed after on-road testing, according to the test results. Then, the vehicle simulation software AVL CRUISE was used to simulate the dynamic behavior of the urban bus. It involves the simulation of complete drive train system and the driver behavior. The model is validated by comparing the results of the simulation to the results of the field test. Then the developed driving cycle is evaluated by fuel consumption resulted from the simulation and engine bench test on fuel economy.

Recent research has shown that butanol, instead of ethanol, has the potential of introducing a more suitable blend in diesel engines. This is because butanol has properties similar to current transportation fuels in comparison to ethanol. However, the main downside is the high cost of the butanol production process. Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) is an intermediate product of the fermentation process of butanol production. By eliminating the separation and purification processes, using ABE directly in diesel blends has the potential of greatly decreasing the overall cost for fuel production. This could lead to a vast commercial use of ABE-diesel blends on the market. Much research has been done in the past five years concerning spray and combustion processes of both neat ABE and ABE-diesel mixtures. Additionally, different compositions of ABE mixtures had been characterized with a similar experimental approach.

Due to the increase of mining production and rising labor costs, manufacturers of construction and mining equipment are engaged in developing large tonnage mining truck with good dynamic performance and high transport efficiency. This paper focuses on the improvement of the dynamic performance of a 52t off-highway dump truck. According to the characteristics of its operating cycle, electric auxiliary drive system is installed in the front axle aiming at improving the utilization rate of ground adhesion. The new all-wheel drive hybrid electric system makes it possible for dump truck transports at a higher velocity. Both the conventional dump truck model and the new all-wheel drive hybrid truck model are built based on the AVL-Cruise platform. Meanwhile, under the premise of enough dynamic performance, fuel consumption can be minimized by collaborative optimization in Isight.

To face the challenges of fossil fuel shortage and air pollution problems, there is growing interest in the potential usage of alternative fuels such as bio-ethanol and bio-butanol in internal combustion engines. The literature shows that the acetone in the Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) blends plays an important part in improving the combustion performance and emissions, owing to its higher volatility. In order to study the effects of acetone addition into commercial gasoline, this study focuses on the differences in combustion, performance and emission characteristics of a port-injection spark-ignition engine fueled with pure gasoline (G100), ethanol-containing gasoline (E30) and acetone-ethanol-gasoline blends (AE30 at A:E volumetric ratio of 3:1). The tests were conducted at 1200RPM with the default calibration (for gasoline), at 3 bar and 5 bar BMEP under various equivalence ratios.

The drivers' hysteretic perception to surrounding environment will affect vehicular fuel economy, especially for the heavy-duty vehicles driving under complex conditions and long distance in mountainous areas. Unreasonable acceleration or deceleration on the slope will increase the fuel consumption. Improving the performance of the engine and the transmission system has limited energy saving potential, and most fuel-efficient driving assistant systems don't consider the road conditions. The main purpose of this research is to introduce an economic driving scheme with consideration of the prestored slope information in which the vehicle speed in mountainous slopes is reasonably planned to guide the driver's behavior for reduction of the fuel consumption. Economic driving optimization algorithm with low space dimension and fast computation speed is established to plan accurate and real-time economic driving scheme.

The paper analyzes the technological features of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, describes the changes that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will bring to the automobile industry and the marketing modes, and proposes a brand-new marketing mode of “automobile supermarket”. It also introduces the opportunities and challenges that fuel cell technology will bring to the world energy technology, and puts forward a concept of “hydrogen energy network” to push the mutual development of both hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen energy industry.

The plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) gradually moves into the mainstream market with its excellent power and energy consumption control, and has become the research target of many researchers. The energy management strategy of plug-in hybrid vehicles is more complicated than conventional gasoline vehicles. Therefore, there are still many problems to be solved in terms of power source distribution and energy saving and emission reduction. This research proposes a new solution and realizes it through simulation optimization, which improves the energy consumption and emission problems of PHEV to a certain extent. First, on the basis that MATLAB software has completed the modeling of the key components of the vehicle, the fuzzy controller of the vehicle is established considering the principle of the joint control of the engine and the electric motor.

Heavy commercial vehicle drivers may frequently shift gears when they are running on long and downhill roads in mountainous area. In order to improve driving safety and fuel economy, it is necessary to predict the slope of the road ahead in real time and correct the driver's shift strategy in time. At present, the road slope estimation is mainly based on the real-time estimation of the road slope at the current position of the vehicle based on the vehicle driving information obtained by the sensors, but the road slope of the road section that the vehicle is about to reach has not been predicted. In this paper, based on the road slope information of the road section that the driver has driven through, combined with Geographic Information System (GIS) information and road design standards, the slope of the road section ahead is predicted.

In the intelligent speed planning system, real-time estimation of road slope is the key to calculate slope resistance and realize the vehicles’ active safety control. However, if the road slope is measured by the sensor while the commercial vehicle is driving, the vibration of the vehicle body will affect its measurement accuracy. Therefore, the relevant algorithm is used to estimate the real-time slope of the road when the commercial vehicle is driving. At present, many domestic and foreign scholars have analyzed and tested the estimation of road slope by the least square method or Kalman filter algorithm. Although the two methods both can achieve the estimation, the real-time performance and accuracy still need to be improved. In this paper, for traditional fuel commercial vehicle, the Kalman filter algorithm based on the kinematics and the extended Kalman filter algorithm based on the longitudinal dynamics are respectively used to estimate the road slope.

Because of the long driving range and good power performance, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) have drawn much attention. And the current fuel-saving effect of PHEV still has a lot of room for improvement. The complex powertrain structure of PHEV makes the requirements for control strategy be increasing. Therefore, it is crucial to develop an efficient control strategy to ensure that the PHEV operates at optimal performance with an improved driving range. This paper establishes a mathematical model for fuel economy control of PHEV, by treating the torque distribution problem as a multi-stage decision optimization problem, and establishes a global energy management strategy based on a dynamic programming (DP) algorithm. Based on the actual physical model, this paper creatively solves the correction range of battery SOC value according to the charge and discharge power of the motor, which greatly reduces the calculation time of the DP algorithm.

Lane changing manoeuvers is an essential rudiment in vehicle driving and has a significant impact on the characteristics of traffic flow. In the case of traditional cars, the driver operates the vehicle to complete the lane change whilst for autonomous vehicles, completing the lane change requires planning the lane change trajectory and controlling the vehicle speed during the lane change. Unreasonable lane change trajectory and vehicle speed may cause the vehicle to lose stability, threaten driving safety, increase energy consumption and waste energy. This paper considers the safety and economy of the lane changing process, and proposes a new lane changing method for vehicles.

In the Plug-in hybrid electric bus, the power train parameter and control strategy significantly affect the economy and dynamic performance. Thus, the simultaneous optimization of power train parameter and control strategy is designed for the trade-off between the dynamic and economic performance. Depending on the parallel electric auxiliary control strategy in a plug-in hybrid electric bus, a vehicle dynamic simulation model is built with the software AVL Cruise. Aiming at the minimization of equivalent gas consumption and acceleration time from 0 to 50kmph, the gear ratio, final drive ratio, gear shifting strategy and control strategy are chosen as optimal variable, which significantly impact power performance and fuel economy. The driving performance and the driving range with full battery are considered as constraints. Based on the software Isight, multi-objective optimization model is built by adopting non-dominated sorting genetic optimization algorithm (NSGA-II).

There are a large number of curves and slopes in the mountainous areas. Unreasonable acceleration and deceleration in these areas will increase the burden of the brake system and the fuel consumption of the vehicle. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce a speed planning and promotion system for commercial vehicles in mountainous areas. The wind, slope, curve, engine brake, and rolling resistances are analyzed to establish the thermal model of the brake system. Based on the thermal model, the safe speed of the brake system is acquired. The maximum safe speed on the turning section is generated by the vehicle dynamic model. And the economic speed is calculated according to the fuel consumption model. The planning speed is provided based on these models. This system can guide the driver to handle the vehicle speed more reasonably.

A new type of dual fuel supply system has been developed. This system is able to economically convert conventional diesel engines into dual-fuel engines like LPG/Diesel engines and CNG/Diesel engines, which are capable of either using single diesel fuel or using dual-fuel including both diesel and CNG fuel or both diesel and LPG fuel. These diesel-LPG engines have been applied to the diesel buses in the public transportation of Guangzhou city, one of the biggest cities in China, owning to their low soot emissions, excellent operating performances and extremely low cost as well. Compared with the diesel baseline engine, it was found that there were a significant reduction in soot emission and an improvement of the fuel consumption with the diesel-LPG engine. Also the strategy on LPG content is discussed in order to meet the demands for soot emission, fuel economy, transient performance and output power at the same time.

A patented VCC (variable combustion chamber) piston mechanism is presented, by which excess in-cylinder pressure would be able to be limited effectively based on each working cycle while a spark-ignition engine running with higher CR (compression ratio) of 12.0:1. A conventional engine can be converted to a VCC engine just by replacing its typical pistons with VCC pistons. Besides the benefits that VCR (Variable Compression Ratio) has been still pursued so far, there would be other advantages for VCC engine, such as excellent fuel economy at each load not only at light loads, and the improvement of cycle-by-cycle variation of in-cylinder pressure, and high reliability with simple structure. The innovative design of VCC piston is introduced. The main design features of VCC piston are a VCC mechanism assembled between the piston crown and the piston skirt, and a special reset cam assembled at the wrist-pin end of the connecting rod.