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Compared to traditional vehicles, four-wheel independent drive and four-wheel independent steering (4WID-4WIS) vehicles have gained significant attention from researchers due to their enhanced control flexibility and superior handling performance. The steering angle deviation caused by dynamic toe angle changes in two-wheel steering (2WS) systems is often minimal and hence overlooked. However, the impact becomes notably significant in 4WIS systems. This article contrasts the tire slip angle differences between 2WS and 4WIS, and delves into the effects of dynamic toe angle variations on 4WIS control. Solutions are proposed both in terms of steering angle control and suspension design. Firstly, a dynamic model for the 4WID-4WIS vehicle is established. Secondly, a hierarchical tire force distribution strategy is designed for trajectory tracking.

Lane changing is an essential action in commercial vehicles to prevent collisions. However, steering system malfunctions significantly escalate the risk of head-on collisions. With the advancement of intelligent chassis control technologies, some autonomous commercial vehicles are now equipped with a four-wheel independent braking system. This article develops a lane-changing control strategy during steering failures using torque vectoring through brake allocation. The boundaries of lane-changing capabilities under different speeds via brake allocation are also investigated, offering valuable insights for driving safety during emergency evasions when the steering system fails. Firstly, a dual-track vehicle dynamics model is established, considering the non-linearity of the tires. A quintic polynomial approach is employed for lane-changing trajectory planning. Secondly, a hierarchical controller is designed.

Ammonia shows promise as an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines (ICEs) in reducing CO2 emissions due to its carbon-free nature and well-established infrastructure. However, certain drawbacks, such as the high ignition energy, the narrow flammability range, and the extremely low laminar flame speed, limit its widespread application. The dual fuel (DF) mode is an appealing approach to enhance ammonia combustion. The combustion characteristics of ammonia-diesel dual fuel mode and ammonia-PODE3 dual fuel mode were experimentally studied using a full-view optical engine and the high-speed photography method. The ammonia energy ratio (ERa) was varied from 40% to 60%, and the main injection energy ratio (ERInj1) and the main injection time (SOI1) were also varied in ammonia-PODE3 mode.

Internal combustion engines, as the dominant power source in the transportation sector and the primary contributor to carbon emissions, face both significant challenges and opportunities in the context of achieving carbon neutral goal. Biofuels, such as biodiesel produced from biomass, and zero-carbon fuel ammonia, can serve as alternative fuels for achieving cleaner combustion in internal combustion engines. The dual-fuel combustion of ammonia-biodiesel not only effectively reduces carbon emissions but also exhibits promising combustion performance, offering a favorable avenue for future applications. However, challenges arise in the form of unburned ammonia (NH3) and N2O emissions. This study, based on a ammonia-biodiesel duel-fuel engine modified from a heavy-duty diesel engine, delves into the impact of adjustments in the two-stage injection strategy on the combustion and emission characteristics.

The strategy for emission reduction in the P2.5 hybrid system involves the optimization of engine torque, engine speed, catalyst heat duration, and motor torque regulation in a coordinated manner. In addition to employing traditional engine control methods used in HEV models, unique approaches can be utilized to effectively manage emissions. The primary principle is to ensure that the engine operates predominantly under steady-state conditions or limits its load to regulate emissions levels. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: The first is the optimization of catalyst heating stage. During the catalyst heating stage, the system divides it into one or two stages. In the first stage, the vehicle is driven by the motor while keeping the engine idle. This approach stabilizes catalyst heating and prevents fluctuations in air-fuel ratio caused by speed and load changes that could potentially worsen emissions performance.

Both ammonia and hydrogen, as zero-carbon fuels for internal combustion engines, are received growing attention. However, ammonia faces a challenge of low flame propagation velocity. Through injecting hydrogen into active pre-chamber, its jet flame ignition can accelerate the flame propagation velocity of ammonia. The influence of different pre-chamber structures on engine combustion characteristics is significant. In this paper, numerical studies were conducted to assess the impact of various pre-chamber structures and hydrogen injection strategy on the combustion characteristics of ammonia/hydrogen engines while maintaining the equivalent ratio of 1.0. The results indicate that the jet angle significantly affects the position of jet flame and the followed main combustion. The in-cylinder combustion pressure peaks at jet angle of 150°. Meanwhile, the combustion duration of 150° is shortened by 74.3% compared with that of 60°.

In the context of carbon neutrality, ammonia is considered a zero-carbon fuel with potential applications in the transportation sector. However, its high ignition energy, low flame speed, and high natural temperature, indicative of low reactivity, make it challenging to be applied as a sole fuel in engines. In such a scenario, the use of another zero-carbon and highly reactive fuel, hydrogen, becomes necessary to enhance the combustion of ammonia. Furthermore, jet ignition, a method known for improving engine combustion performance, may also hold potential for enhancing the combustion performance of ammonia engines. To explore the applicability of jet ignition in engines, this study conducted experimental research on a single-cylinder engine. Two ignition methods were employed: passive jet ignition of premixed ammonia-hydrogen at a compression ratio of 11.5, and active jet ignition of pure ammonia using hydrogen jet flame at a compression ratio of 17.3.

In order to solve the problems of the shuffle caused by internal and external excitation and the difficulty in obtaining the real-time accurate engine torque during the parallel mode operation of hybrid electric vehicles, a dynamic coordination control strategy for suppressing the jitter of hybrid electric vehicles based on the closed-loop control of engine speed was proposed. The engine torque filtering control method based on the slope limit was adopted to limit the rate of change of the engine torque and reduce the impact caused by the sudden change of the engine torque; the engine speed closed-loop control method was used to take the motor speed which is easy to be measured accurately in real time as the feedback control variable, which solved the problem of the real-time accurate estimation of the engine torque online. In parallel mode, the motor torque accounts for a small proportion because the torque distribution method gives priority to the engine.

Ammonia and methanol are both future fuels with carbon-neutral potential. Ammonia has a high octane number, a slow flame speed, and a narrow ignition limit, while methanol has a fast flame speed with complementary combustion characteristics but is more likely to lead to pre-ignition and knock. In this paper, the combustion and emission characteristics of ammonia-methanol solution in a high compression ratio spark ignition engine are investigated. The experimental results show that the peak in-cylinder pressure and peak heat release rate of the engine when using ammonia-methanol solution are lower and the combustion phase is retarded compared with using methanol at the same spark timing conditions. Using ammonia-methanol solution in the engine resulted in a more ideal combustion phase than that of gasoline, leading to an increase in indicated thermal efficiency of more than 0.6% and a wider range of efficient operating conditions.

Ammonia (NH3), a zero-carbon fuel, has great potential for internal combustion engine development. However, its high ignition energy, low laminar burning velocity, narrow range of flammability limits, and high latent heat of vaporization are not conducive for engine application. This paper numerically investigates the feasibility of utilizing ammonia in a heavy-duty diesel engine, specifically through low-pressure direct injection (LP-DI) of hydrogen to ignite ammonia combustion. Due to the lack of a well-corresponding mechanism for the operating conditions of ammonia-hydrogen engines, this study serves only as a trend-oriented prediction. The paper compares the engine's combustion and emission performance by optimizing four critical parameters: excess air ratio, hydrogen energy ratio, ignition timing, and hydrogen injection timing. The results reveal that excessively high hydrogen energy ratios lead to an advanced combustion phase, reducing indicated thermal efficiency.

Turbulent jet ignition (TJI) combustion using pre-chamber ignition can accelerate the combustion speed in the cylinder and has garnered growing interest in recent years. However, it is complicated for the optimization of the pre-chamber structure and combustion system. This study investigated the effects of the pre-chamber structure and the intake ports on the combustion characteristics of a gasoline engine through CFD simulation. Spark ignition (SI) combustion simulation was also conducted for comparison. The results showed that the design of the pre-chamber that causes the jet flame colliding with walls severely worsen the combustion, increasing the knocking intendency, and decrease the thermal efficiency. Compared with SI combustion mode, the TJI combustion mode has the higher heat transfer loss and lower unburned loss. The well-optimized pre-chamber can accelerate the flame propagation with knock suppression.

Ammonia is employed as the carbon-free fuel in the future engine, which is consistent with the requirements of the current national dual-carbon policy. However, the great amount of NOx and unburned NH3/H2 in the exhaust emissions is produced from combustion of ammonia and is one kind of the most strictly controlled pollutants in the emission regulation. This paper aims to investigate the NOx and unburned NH3/H2 generative process and emission characteristics by CFD simulation during the engine combustion. The results show that the unburned ammonia and hydrogen emissions increase with an increase of equivalence ratio and hydrogen blending ratio. In contrast, the emission concentrations of NOx, NO, and NO2 decrease with the increasing of equivalence ratio, but increase with hydrogen blending ratio rising. The emission concentration of N2O is highly sensitive to the O/H group and temperature, and it is precisely opposite to that of NO and NO2.

Liquid ammonia is an ideal zero carbon fuel to reduce carbon emission of internal combustion engines. The high-pressure injection of liquid ammonia is a key technology to fast distribute fuels and prepare better combustion performances. The physical properties of liquid ammonia are different to traditional fossil fuels including diesel and gasoline, which can change the spray and droplet characteristics significantly. However, the spray droplet characteristics of liquid ammonia injection is lack of investigations. In this paper, Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) are used to measure the droplet diameter and velocity of high-pressure liquid ammonia sprays up to 75 MPa and compare to diesel sprays. Effects of flash boiling of liquid ammonia droplet characteristics are also analyzed.

Lean combustion is an approach to achieving higher thermal efficiency for spark ignition engines. However, it faces low burning velocity and unstable combustion problems near the lean flammability limits region. The current work is attempting to investigate the combustion characteristics of iso-octane flame with 0% and 30% H2 up to near lean limits (λ = 1.7) at 100-300 kPa and 393-453 K. The flame appeared spherically by 37 mJ spark energy at λ = 0.8-1.2, whereas the ultra-lean mixtures, λ ≥ 1.3, ignited at 3000 mJ under wrinkles and buoyancy effects. The impact of initial pressure and temperature on the lean mixture was stronger than the stoichiometric mixture regarding flame radius and diffusional-thermal instability. The buoyancy appeared at the highest burning velocity of 27.41 cm/s.

In recent years, the tractor-semitrailer combination has become the primary vehicle of China's long-distance freight system. In this paper, with the aim of optimizing the path tracking control and following control of the tractor-semitrailer combination, a kinematics-based path tracking control scheme is proposed. Firstly, a kinematic model of the tractor-semitrailer combination has been constructed. The control of the tractor-semitrailer combination is simplified to focus on three control points based on the kinematics model. Secondly, the path tracking control algorithm and the following control algorithm of the tractor-semitrailer combination are proposed in this paper. The improved MPC is used for path-tracking control of tractor-semitrailer combinations. The cost function of rolling optimization steps is intended, and the optimal line is determined with the lateral deviation, the variation of lateral error, and the deviation of heading angle as the input.

To tackle the over-actuated and highly nonlinear characteristics that four-wheel-independent-steering and four-wheel-independent -driving (4WIS/4WID) vehicles exhibit when tracking aggressive trajectory, a hierarchical controller with layers of computation-intensive modules is commonly adopted. The high-level linear motion controller commands the desired state derivatives of the vehicle to meet the overall trajectory tracking objectives. Then the system dynamic is inversed by the mid-level control allocation layer and the low-level wheel control layer to map the target state derivatives to steering angle and motor torque commands. However, this type of controller is difficult to implement on the embedded hardware onboard since the nonlinear dynamic inversion is typically solved by nonlinear programming.

An intelligent connected vehicle (ICV) swarm system that includes N vehicles is considered. Based on the special properties of potential functions, a kinematic model describing the swarm performances is proposed, which allows all vehicles to enclose the tracking target and show both tracking and formation characteristics. Treating the performances as the desired constraints, the analytical form of constraint forces can be obtained inspired by the Udwadia-Kalaba approaches. A special approach of uncertainty decomposition to deal with uncertain interferences is proposed, and a switching-type robust control method is addressed for each vehicle agent in the swarm system. The features and validity of the addressed control are demonstrated in the numerical simulations.

In order to obtain a good understanding of mechanical behaviors of lithium-ion battery modules in electric vehicles, comprehensive experimental and numerical investigations were performed in the study. Mechanical indentation tests with different indentation heads, different loading directions and different impact speeds were performed on battery modules with prismatic cells. To mitigate thermal runaway, only fully discharged battery modules were used. The force-displacement responses and open circuit voltage were recorded and compared. It was found that the battery modules experienced different failure modes when subjected to mechanical abuse. Besides internal short circuit of cells, external short circuit from bus bar and vapor leakage of electrolyte were also found to deteriorate the mechanical and electrical integrity of the tested modules. Mechanical anisotropy and dynamic effect were found on the battery module.

In this decade, the detailed multi-layer FE model is always applied for investigating the mechanical behavior of Li-ion batteries under mechanical abuse. However, establishing a detailed model of different types of batteries requires a series of material characterization of components. To improve the efficiency of the procedure of component calibration, we introduce a procedure of automatic coating material characterization as an example to represent the strategy. The proposed method is constructing a response solver through MATLAB to predict the mechanical behavior of the coating specimen's representative volume element (RVE) under designated test conditions. The coating material is represented through Drucker-Prager-Cap (DPC) model. All parameters, including boundary conditions and material parameters, are included in this solver.

Due to the extended range hybrid vehicle powertrain system having multivariable and non-linear characters, this paper proposed a real-time simulation development platform scheme based on model design. First, a segmented energy management strategy (thermostat + power following) was proposed, which aims to improve the engine operation efficiency and reduce the losses during both charging and discharging. Second, the offline simulation model of the extended range hybrid vehicle powertrain system is established, which can realize the control function and meet the requirements of the real vehicle. Third, the hardware in the loop simulation platform of the vehicle controller is established, and the vehicle control program can run correctly in the real-time controller. The test of the offline simulation by Matlab/Simulink and the controller’s hardware in the loop (HIL) test are completed.