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It is recognized that the heavier vehicles, the more emissions, thus the more imperative to electrify. In this study, long haul heavy-duty trucks are referred as HDTs, which are recognized as one of the hard-to-electrify vehicle segments, though the automotive industry has gained trending advantages of electrifying both light-duty cars and SUVs. Since big rigs such as Class 8 HDTs have significant road-block challenges for electrification due to the demanding long-hour work cycles in all weathers, this study focuses on quantifying those electrification challenges by taking advantage of the public data of Class 8 tractors & trailers. Tesla Semi is the research target though its vehicle spec data is sorted out with fragmentary information in the public domain. The key task is to analyze the battery capacity requirements due to environmental temperature and inherent aging over the lifespan.

Positioning system is a key module of autonomous driving. As for LiDAR SLAM system, it faces great challenges in scenarios where there are repetitive and sparse features. Without loop closure or measurements from other sensors, odometry match errors or accumulated errors cannot be corrected. This paper proposes a construction method of LiDAR anchor constraints to improve the robustness of the SLAM system in the above challenging environment. We propose a robust anchor extraction method that adaptively extracts suitable cylindrical anchors in the environment, such as tree trunks, light poles, etc. Skewed tree trunks are detected by feature differences between laser lines. Boundary points on cylinders are removed to avoid misleading. After the appropriate anchors are detected, a factor graph-based anchor constraint construction method is designed. Where direct scans are made to anchor, direct constraints are constructed.

The Chinese government and industries have proposed strategic plans and policies for automotive renewable-energy transformation in response to China’s commitments to peak the national carbon emissions before 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. We thus analyze the evolution of carbon emissions from the vehicle fleet in China with our data-driven models based on these plans. Our results indicate that the vehicle life-cycle carbon emissions are appreciable, accounting for 8.9% of the national total and 11.3% of energy combustion in 2020. Commercial vehicles are the primary source of automotive carbon emissions, accounting for about 60% of the vehicle energy cycle. Among these, heavy-duty trucks are the most important, producing 38.99% of the total carbon emissions in the vehicle operation stage in 2020 and 52.18% in 2035.

The displacement of the shaft head fails to be accurately measured while the three-axle heavy-duty truck is driving on the reinforced pavement. In order to obtain accurate fatigue load spectrum of the suspension bracket, the acceleration signals of the shaft heads of the suspension obtained by the reinforced pavement test measurement are virtually iterated as responses. A more accurate model of the rigid-flexible coupled multi-body dynamics (MBD) of the whole vehicle is established by introducing a flexible frame based on the comprehensive modal theory. Furthermore, the vertical displacements of the shaft heads are obtained by the reverse solution of the virtual iterative method with well-pleasing precision. The accuracy of the virtual iteration is verified by comparing the simulation results with the vertical acceleration of the shaft head under the reinforced pavement in the time domain and damage domain.

With the growing prosperity of the long-distance freight and urban logistics industry, the demand for cargo trucks is gradually increasing. The connecting bracket is the critical connecting part of the truck chassis, which bears the load transmitted by the road excitation and reduces the damage to the frame caused by the load. However, the occurrence of rough road conditions is inevitable in heavy-duty transportation. In this paper, road durability tests and fatigue life analysis are carried out on the original structure to ensure the safety of the vehicle. Based on the known boundary and load constraints, a lightweight and high-performance structure is obtained through size optimization, as the original structure cannot meet the performance requirements. Firstly, the road test was conducted on the truck where the original bracket structure is located.

This study investigated the plastic deformation behavior of 304 stainless steel thin-walled tubes under axial compression by means of numerical calculation and theoretical analysis. It was found that the plastic deformation length of thin-walled tube determined the formability of folds and the work done in the whole axial compression process. To reveal the relation between the range of plastic deformation length and tube geometry parameters, regression equations were established using the quadratic regression orthogonal design method. Experiments were conducted to validate the equations. The process windows for forming a single fold and tube joining at ends had been printed ultimately. The results showed that the regression equations can accurately predict the range of plastic deformation length for forming a single fold.

A tractor-trailer vehicle (TTV) consists of an actuated tractor attached with several full trailers. Because of its nonlinear and noncompleted constraints, it is a challenging task to avoid collisions for path planner. In this paper, we propose an efficient method to plan an optimal trajectory for TTV to reach the destination without any collision. To deal with the complicated constraints, the trajectory planning problem is formulated as an optimal control problem uniformly, which can be solved by the interior point method. A novel incremental optimization solving algorithm (IOSA) is proposed to accelerate the optimization process, which makes the number of trailers and the size of obstacles increase asynchronously. Simulation experiments are carried out in two scenarios with static obstacles. Compared with other methods, the results show that the planning method with IOSA outperforms in the efficiency.

Lane marking detection plays a crucial role in Autonomous Driving Systems or Advanced Driving Assistance System. Vision based lane marking detection technology has been well discussed and put into practical application. LiDAR is more stable for challenging environment compared to cameras, and with the development of LiDAR technology, price and lifetime are no longer an issue. We propose a lane marking detection algorithm based on solid-state LiDARs. First a series of data pre-processing operations were done for the solid-state LiDARs with small field of view, and the needed ground points are extracted by the RANSAC method. Then, based on the OTSU method, we propose an approach for extracting lane marking points using intensity information.

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) uses hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, the whole energy conversion process almost has no negative impact on the environment. The PEM fuel cell stack with the advantages of low-operating temperature, high current density and fast start-up ability is considered to be the next generation of new electric vehicle power. However, due to the limited current output, it is difficult for a single cell to meet the practical application requirements. The actual fuel cell stack is formed by many single cells assembled together. The assembly process is often related to load transfer, material transfer, energy exchange, multi-phase flow, electrochemical reaction and other factors. The performance of MEA (Membrane Electrode Assembly), sealing gaskets and other components will change during the assembly process, which makes the fuel cell stack assembly process more complex.

Environmental perception is a crucial subsystem in autonomous vehicles. In order to build safe and efficient traffic transportation, several researches have been proposed to build accurate, robust and real-time perception systems. Camera and LiDAR are widely equipped on autonomous self-driving cars and developed with many algorithms in recent years. The fusion system of camera and LiDAR provides state-of the-art methods for environmental perception due to the defects of single vehicular sensor. Extrinsic parameter calibration is able to align the coordinate systems of sensors and has been drawing enormous attention. However, differ from spatial alignment of two sensors’ data, joint calibration of multi-sensors (more than two sensors) should balance the degree of alignment between each two sensors.

Millions of configurations of power-split hybrid powertrain can be generated due to variation in number of planetary-gear sets (PG), difference in number, type and installation location of shift actuators (clutches or brakes), and difference in connection positions of power components. Considering the large number of configurations, complex structures and control modes, it is vital to construct an appropriate multi-index system evaluation method, which directly affects the requirement fulfillment, the time and cost of 2-PG system configuration design. Considering one-sidedness (dynamics and economic performance), simplicity (linear combination of indicators) and subjectivity (relying on expert experience) of previous system evaluation method of 2-PG system design, a more systematic evaluation method is proposed in this paper. The proposed evaluation system consists of five aspects, involving dynamic, economy, comfort, reliability and cost, and more than 20 indexes.

This paper presents a theoretical study of a finite hybrid piezoelectric phononic crystal (PC) beam with shunting circuits. The vibration transmissibility method (TM) is developed for the finite system. The uniform and non-uniform configurations of the resonators, piezoelectric patches and shunting circuits are respectively considered. The properties of the vibration attenuation of the hybrid PC beam undergoing bending vibration are investigated and quantified. It is shown that the proper relaxation of the periodicity of the PC is conducive to forming a broad vibration attenuation region. The hybrid piezoelectric PC combines the purely mechanical PC with the piezoelectric PC and provides more tunable mechanisms for the target band-gap. Taking the structural and circuit parameters into account, the design of experiments (DOE) method and the multi-objective genetic optimization method are employed to improve the vibration attenuation and meet the lightweight demand of the attachments.

As a critical technology for autonomous vehicles, high precise positioning is essential for automated container terminals to implement intelligent dispatching and to improve container transport efficiency. Because of the unstable performance of global positioning system (GPS) in some circumstances, an ultra wide band (UWB) positioning system is developed for autonomous trucks in an automated container terminal. In this paper, an asynchronous structure is adopted in the system, and a three-dimensional (3D) localization method is proposed. Other than a traditional UWB positioning system with a server, in this asynchronous system, positions are calculated in the vehicle. Therefore, propagation delays from the server to vehicles are eliminated, and the real-time performance can be significantly improved. Traditional 3D localization methods based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) are mostly invalid with anchors in the same plane.

The cab is an essential part of a light truck, and its fatigue durability performance plays an important role in the design and development stage. Accelerated fatigue bench test has been widely applied to product development of carmakers for its low cost and short development cycle. However, in reality, interference exists generally in torsional conditions for the light truck cab when tested on the 4-post vehicle road simulation system. To solve this problem and minimize the lateral force applied on the hydraulic cylinders, the direction and size combinations of displacement release about front and rear suspensions were discussed based on multi-body dynamics simulation and fixture design theory in this paper. Through comparative study, the optimum design and layout scheme of fixtures was determined to conduct the next test procedure. The weak positions of the light truck cab were firstly predicted by utilizing finite element method (FEM) and fatigue analysis theory.

On the dual-motor electric vehicle, which is driven by two electric motors mounted on the front and rear axles respectively, longitudinal dynamic control and electro-dynamic braking can be achieved by controlling the torque of front and rear axle motors respectively. Suspension displacement is related to the wheel torque, thus the pitch of vehicle body can be influenced by changing the torque distribution ratio. The pitch of the body has a great influence on the vehicle comfort, which occurs mainly during acceleration and braking progress. Traditionally active suspension is adopted to control the pitch of body. Instead, in this paper an ideal torque distribution strategy is developed to limit the pitch during acceleration and braking progress. This paper first explores the relationship between the torque distribution and the body pitch through the real vehicle test, which reveals the feasibility of the vehicle comfort promotion by optimizing the torque distribution coefficient.

Electric wheel systems of in-wheel motor driven vehicles consist of the motor controller, in-wheel motor and tire-suspension assembly. The coupling between the electromagnetic excitation and elastic structure gives rise to electromechanical dynamic issues. As for the structural layout of the electric wheel system, the driving motor is directly connected to the wheel without torsion dampers or transmission in the driveline, thus making the electric wheel structure a weak damping system. Moreover, the driving torque of electric wheel can change rapidly in various conditions of vehicle. As a result, the transient vibration problem becomes one of the key electromechanical dynamic issues in the electric wheel system. To investigate this problem, the electromechanical coupling model of the electric wheel system is established first. Then the transient responses of the electric wheel under abrupt changes of the driving torque are simulated.

In China Cut-in scenarios are quite common on both highway and urban road with heavy traffic. They have a potential risk of rear-end collision. When facing a cutting in vehicle, driver tends to brake in most case to reduce collision risk. The timing and dynamic characteristics of brake maneuver are indicators of driver subjective risk perception. Time to collision (TTC) and Time Headway (THW) demonstrate objective risk. This paper aims at building a model quantitatively revealing the relationship between drivers’ subjective risk perception and objective risk. A total of 66 valid critical Cut-in cases was extracted from China-FOT, which has a travel distance of about 130 thousand miles. It is found that under Cut-in scenarios, driver tended to brake when the cutting in vehicle right crossing line. This time point was defined as initial brake time. Brake strength and brake speed were taken to describe brake maneuver.

The action of load on the component is crucial to evaluate the performance of durability. Another factor that affects fatigue life is the boundary conditions of the test specimen being tested by introducing unrealistic loads on the component of interest. The physical test is widely conducted in the laboratory. The fixture provides additional constraints on the test specimen as well as reaction forces to balance the test system [1]. The characteristics of the fixture involved in the test is important to analyze and assess the test results [2]. The impact of the reaction force of the fixture on the spindle-coupled axle road simulation test is presented in this article. A simplified 7-DoF (degrees of freedom) model is introduced to demonstrate the dynamic behavior of the vehicle. The influence on the internal load by the fixture has been analyzed. Followed by a more detailed MBS (multibodysystem) model to give a thorough understanding of the phenomenon.

The increasingly stringent emission regulations have mandated the use of CCRT (catalyzed continuously regeneration trap) made by upstream DOC (diesel oxidation catalyst) and downstream CDPF (catalyzed diesel particulate filter) for heavy-duty diesel vehicles, which is proved to be the only way that can efficiently control the gaseous and particulate emissions. The performance of after-treatment is greatly influenced by the running conditions of the diesel vehicle and its exhaust parameters, so this paper intended to use grey relational analysis to study the correlation between running conditions (velocity, acceleration, VSP (vehicle specific power)), exhaust parameters (exhaust flow rate, DOC inlet temperature, concentrations of CO, THC, O2 and NOX) and the performance of DOC and CCRT based on chassis dynamometer test. Results showed that the effect of DOC on CO and THC is mainly affected by exhaust flow rate, exhaust temperature and THC concentration.

Carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composites have gained particular interests due to their high specific modulus, high strength, lightweight and resistance to environment. In the automotive industry, numerous studies have been ongoing to replace the metal components with CFRP for the purpose of weight saving. One of the significant benefits of CFRP laminates is the ability of tailoring fiber orientation and ply thickness to meet the acceptable level of structural performance with little waste of material capability. This study focused on the concurrent optimization of ply orientation and thickness for CFRP laminated engine hood, which was based on the gradient-based discrete material and thickness optimization (DMTO) method. Two manufactural constraints, namely contiguity and intermediate void constraints, were taken into account in the optimization problem to reduce the potential risk of cracking matrix of CFRP.