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Global concerns on sustainable energy use call for innovative energy conversion technologies. Batteries are key enablers for more sustainable mobility provided the availability of renewable energy sources. Batteries are integrated in battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid electric vehicles. All these applications call for high energy and power density, long lifetime and highest safety. However, there are application-specific objectives like different load profiles and thus specific durability and safety criteria. A single design of a battery cell cannot optimally comply with all envisaged application areas. Tailoring battery designs to a specific application with the aim of approaching engineering limits represents a significant challenge. Virtual prototyping with predictive models is one key enabler to frontload the development process. This is important in the light of the outlined challenges, which cover a broad range of spatial and temporal scales.

The advancing electrification of the powertrain is giving rise to new challenges in the field of acoustics. Film capacitors used in power electronics are a potential source of high-frequency interfering noise since they are exposed to voltage harmonics. These voltage harmonics are caused by semiconductor switching operations that are necessary to convert the DC voltage of the battery into three-phase alternating current for an electrical machine. In order to predict the acoustic characteristics of the DC-link capacitor at an early stage of development, a multiphysical chain of effects has to be addressed to consider electrical and mechanical influences. In this paper, a new method to evaluate the excitation amplitude of film capacitor windings is presented. The corresponding amplitudes are calculated via an analytical strain based on electromechanical couplings of the dielectric within film capacitors.

A growing development of hybrid or fully electrical drives increases the demand for an accurate prediction of noise and vibration characteristics of electric and electronic components. This paper describes the numerical and experimental investigation of noise emissions from power electronics, as one of the new important noise sources in electric vehicles. The noise emitted from the printed circuit board (PCB) equipped with multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) is measured and used for the calibration and validation of numerical model. Material properties are tuned using results from experimental modal analysis, with special attention to the orthotropic characteristic of the PCB glass-reinforced epoxy laminate sheet (FR-4). Electroacoustic excitation is pre-calculated using an extension of schematic-based EMC simulation and applied to the structural model. Structural vibrations are calculated with a commercial FEM solver with the modal frequency response analysis.

The paper focuses on an optimization methodology, which uses Design of Experiments (DoE) methods to define component parameters of parallel hybrid powertrains such as number of gears, transmission spread, gear ratios, progression factor, electric motor power, electric motor nominal speed, battery voltage and cell capacity. Target is to find the optimal configuration based on specific customer targets (e.g. fuel consumption, performance targets). In the method developed here, the hybrid drive train configuration and the combustion engine are considered as fixed components. The introduced methodology is able to reduce development time and to increase output quality of the early system definition phase. The output parameters are used as a first hint for subsequently performed detailed component development. The methodology integrates existing software tools like AVL CRUISE [5] and AVL CAMEO [1].

The present work introduces an innovative mechanistically based 0D spray model which is coupled to a combustion model on the basis of an advanced mixture controlled combustion approach. The model calculates the rate of heat release based on the injection rate profile and the in-cylinder state. The air/fuel distribution in the spray is predicted based on momentum conservation by applying first principles. On the basis of the 2-zone cylinder framework, NOx emissions are calculated by the Zeldovich mechanism. The combustion and emission models are calibrated and validated with a series of dedicated test bed data specifically revealing its capability of describing the impact of variations of EGR, injection timing, and injection pressure. A model based optimization is carried out, aiming at an optimum trade-off between fuel consumption and engine-out emissions. The findings serve to estimate an economic optimum point in the NOx/BSFC trade-off.

In recent years concern has arisen over a new combustion anomaly, which was not commonly associated with naturally aspirated engines. This phenomenon referred to as Low-Speed Pre-Ignition (LSPI), which often leads to potentially damaging peak cylinder pressures, is the most important factor limiting further downsizing and the potential CO2 benefits that it could bring. Previous studies have identified several potential triggers for pre-ignition where engine oil seems to have an important influence. Many studies [1], [2] have reported that detached oil droplets from the piston crevice volume lead to auto-ignition prior to spark ignition. Furthermore, wall wetting and subsequently oil dilution [3] and changes in the oil properties by impinging fuel on the cylinder wall seem to have a significant influence in terms of accumulation and detachment of oil-fuel droplets in the combustion chamber.

The automotive trend towards increased levels of electrification is showing a clear direction for hybrid technologies. Nowadays Mild- and plug-in-hybrids open a very wide area of future developments whereas battery electric vehicles (BEV) are still evident but still perceived as niche products with limited production volumes. Nevertheless, major OEMs are working on these kinds of vehicles and have also brought such EV concepts into series production. All of these designs show a clear trend that, beside the topic of electric traction motor and energy storage systems, the internal combustion engine (ICE) is also coming into focus again. In many of these vehicles the range extender (RE) unit is foreseen as an emergency unit to recharge the batteries if the state of charge (SOC) is too low. One of the major advantages of a BEV over other designs is the very good acoustic behavior, so the NVH performance becomes the most challenging topic for RE development.

The continuously decreasing emission limits lead to a growing importance of exhaust aftertreatment in Diesel engines. Hence, methods for achieving a rapid catalyst light-off after engine cold start and for maintaining the catalyst temperature during low load operation will become more and more necessary. The present work evaluates several valve timing strategies concerning their ability for doing so. For this purpose, simulations as well as experimental investigations were conducted. A special focus of simulation was on pointing out the relevance of exhaust temperature, mass flow and enthalpy for these thermomanagement tasks. An increase of exhaust temperature is beneficial for both catalyst heat-up and maintaining catalyst temperature. In case of the exhaust mass flow, high values are advantageous only in case of a catalyst heat-up process, while maintaining catalyst temperature is supported by a low mass flow.

This paper presents a system-level thermal model of a fluid-cooled Li-Ion battery module. The model is a reduced order model (ROM) identified by results from finite element analysis (FEA)/computational fluid dynamic (CFD) coupling simulation using the linear and time-invariant (LTI) method. The ROM consists of two LTI sub-systems: one of which describes the battery temperature response to a transient battery current, and the other of which takes into account of the battery temperature variation due to a heat flux induced by a varied inlet temperature of the battery cooling circuit. The thermal LTI model can be coupled to an electrical model to build a complete system-level battery ROM. Test examples show that the ROM is able to provide as accurate results as those from FEA/CFD coupling simulations.

Direct injection Diesel engines are a propulsion technology that is continuously developed to meet emission standards. Great optimization potential lies in the combustion process itself. The application of closed loop combustion control allows reacting online to environmental conditions and stabilizing the combustion regarding performance and emissions. Dedicated real-time plant models help to develop and calibrate control algorithms in office and hardware in the loop environments. The present work describes a real-time capable, crank-angle resolved engine, cylinder and combustion model. The cylinder applies an 0D, two-zone approach and a phenomenological combustion model describes ignition delay, premixed and diffusive combustion. The latter is enhanced by a quasi-dimensional description of the injection spray. The model is validated with dedicated measurements. The plant model is applied in two use-cases for closed loop combustion control.

In the present work, a scalable simulation methodology is presented that enables the assessment of the impact of SI-engine cycle-to-cycle combustion variations on fuel consumption and hence CO2 emissions on three different levels of modeling depth: in-cylinder, steady-state engine and transient engine and vehicle simulation. On the detailed engine combustion chamber level, a 3D-CFD approach is used to study the impact of the turbulent in-cylinder flow on the cycle-resolved flame propagation characteristics. On engine level, cycle-to-cycle combustion variations are assessed regarding their impact on indicated mean effective pressure, aiming at estimating the possible fuel consumption savings when cyclic variations are minimized. Finally, on the vehicle system level, a combined real-time engine approach with crank-angle resolved cylinder is used to assess the potential fuel consumption savings for different vehicle drivecycle conditions.

The automotive industry is racing to introduce some degree of hybridization into their product ranges. Since the term “hybrid vehicle” can cover a wide range of differing technologies and drivetrain topologies, this has led to a large amount of vehicles that call themselves “hybrid”. This poses an interesting challenge for marketers to differentiate these vehicles from the incumbents. However, it is not just the marketers who are faced with challenges, the developers of such hybrid drivetrains are faced with a rise in technical complexity due to the wide range of operating modes hybridization introduces. As propulsive torque is being generated in more than one place in a hybrid vehicle, the transitions from conventional drive to electrically supported drive bring with them complex aspects of multi-dimensional system control. The challenge is to be able to implement hybrid technology in an existing drivetrain, while adapting the existing components as required.

Today, the number of downsized engines with two or three cylinders is increasing due to an increase in fuel efficiency. However, downsized engines exhibit unbalanced interior sound in the range of their optimal engine speed, largely because of their dominant engine orders. In particular, the sound of two-cylinder engines yields half the perceived engine speed of an equivalent four-cylinder engine at the same engine speed. As a result when driving, the two-cylinder engine would be shifted to higher gears much later, diminishing the expected fuel savings. This contribution presents an active in-car sound generation system that makes a two-cylinder engine sound like the more familiar four-cylinder engine. This is done by active, load-dependent playback of signals extracted from the engine vibration through a shaker mounted on the firewall. A blind test with audio experts indicates a significant reduction of the engine speed when shifting to a higher gear.

Due to future directives of the European Union regarding fuel consumption and CO2 emissions the automotive industry is forced to develop new and unconventional technologies. These include for example stop-start-systems, cylinder deactivation or even reduction of the number of cylinders which however lead to unusual acoustical perceptions and customer complaints. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the sound character of engines with low numbers of cylinders (2 and 3 cylinders) and also the differences to the character of the more common 4-cylinder engines. Psychoacoustic parameters are used to describe and understand the differences. Based on the gained knowledge possible potentials for improvement can be derived in the future. The used data base consists of artificial head recordings of car interior noise according to defined driving conditions measured on the AVL test track. Naturally, there are more recordings available for 4-cylinder engines than for 2- and 3-cylinder engines.

The present works presents a real-time capable engine model with physical based description of the fuel injection and the combustion process. The model uses a crank-angle resolved cylinder model and a filling and emptying approach for cylinder and gas-path interaction. A common rail injection system model is developed and implemented into the real-time engine framework. The injection model calculates injection quantity and injection rate profile from the input of the ECU signals target injection pressure and injection timing. The model accounts for pressure oscillations in the injection system. A phenomenological combustion model for Diesel engines is implemented, which is based on the mixing controlled combustion modeling approach. The combustion model calculates the rate of heat release from the injection rate given by the injection model. The injection and combustion model are validated in detail against steady-state measurement data for two different passenger car sized engines.

In this paper, a recently improved Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methodology for virtual prototyping of the heat treatment of cast aluminum parts, above most of cylinder heads of internal combustion engines (ICE), is presented. The comparison between measurement data and numerical results has been carried out to simulate the real time immersion quenching cooling process of realistic cylinder head structure using the commercial CFD code AVL FIRE®. The Eulerian multi-fluid modeling approach is used to handle the boiling flow and the heat transfer between the heated structure and the sub-cooled liquid. While for the fluid region governing equations are solved for each phase separately, only the energy equation is solved in the solid region. Heat transfer coefficients depend on the boiling regimes which are separated by the Leidenfrost temperature.

This study deals with the experimental investigation of the mechanical properties of a lithium-ion pouch cell and its modelling in an explicit finite element simulation code. One can distinguish between ‘macroscopic’ and ‘microscopic’ modelling approaches. In the ‘macroscopic’ approach, one material model approximates the behaviour of multiple inner cell layers. In the ‘microscopic’ approach, which is used in the present study, all layers and their interactions are modelled separately. The cell under study is a pouch-type lithium-ion cell with a liquid electrolyte. With its cell chemistry, design, size and capacity it is usable for automotive applications and can be assembled into traction batteries. One cell sample was fully discharged and disassembled, and its components (anode, cathode, separator and pouch) were examined and measured by electron microscopy. Components were also tensile tested.

Engine simulation can be performed using model approaches of different depths in capturing physical effects. The present paper presents a comprehensive comparison study on seven different engine models. The models range from transient 1D cycle resolved approaches to steady-state non-dimensional maps. The models are discussed in the light of key features, amount and kind of required input data, model calibration effort and predictability and application areas. The computational performance of the different models and their capabilities to capture different transient effects is investigated together with a vehicle model under real-life driving conditions. In the trade-off field of model predictability and computational performance an innovative approach on crank-angle resolved cylinder modeling turned out to be most beneficial.

The need for significant reduction of fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions has become the major driver for development of new vehicle powertrains today. For the medium term, the majority of new vehicles will retain an internal combustion engine (ICE) in some form. The ICE may be the sole prime mover, part of a hybrid powertrain or even a range extender; in every case potential still exists for improvement in mechanical efficiency of the engine itself, through reduction of friction and of parasitic losses for auxiliary components. A comprehensive approach to mechanical efficiency starts with an analysis of the main contributions to engine friction, based on a measurement database of a wide range of production engines. Thus the areas with the highest potential for improvement are identified. For each area, different measures for friction reduction may be applicable with differing benefits.

The automotive industry is racing to introduce some degree of hybridization into their product ranges. Since the term "hybrid vehicle" can cover a wide range of differing technologies and drivetrain topologies, this has led to a plethora of vehicles that call them "hybrid." This poses an interesting challenge for marketers to differentiate these vehicles from the incumbents. However, it is not just the marketers who are faced with challenges, the developers of such hybrid drivetrains are faced with a rise in technical complexity due to the wide range of operating modes hybridization introduces. As propulsive torque is being generated in more than one place in a hybrid vehicle, the transitions from conventional drive to electrically supported drive bring with them complex aspects of multi-dimensional system control. The challenge is to be able to implement hybrid technology in an existing drivetrain, while adapting the existing components as required.