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Limited battery power and poor engine efficiency at cold temperature results in low plug in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) fuel economy and high emissions. Quick rise of battery temperature is not only important to mitigate lithium plating and thus preserve battery life, but also to increase the battery power limits so as to fully achieve fuel economy savings expected from a PHEV. Likewise, it is also important to raise the engine temperature so as to improve engine efficiency (therefore vehicle fuel economy) and to reduce emissions. One method of increasing the temperature of either component is to maximize their usage at cold temperatures thus increasing cumulative heat generating losses. Since both components supply energy to meet road load demand, maximizing the usage of one component would necessarily mean low usage and slow temperature rise of the other component. Thus, a natural trade-off exists between battery and engine warm-up.

The first stage of ignition in saturated hydrocarbon fuels is characterized as low temperature heat release (LTHR) or cool flame combustion. LTHR takes place as a series of isomerization reactions at temperatures from 600K to 900K, and is often detectable in HCCI, rapid compression machines, and early injection low temperature combustion (LTC). The experimental investigation presented attempts to determine the behavior of LTHR in late injection low temperature combustion in a medium duty diesel as fuel varies and the influence of such behavior on LTC torque and emissions.

This paper describes the development of a dedicated liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) fueled spark-ignition engine and vehicle (Chrysler minivan) for the 1996 Propane Vehicle Challenge. This student competition was intended to advance the development of propane-fueled vehicles, to encourage innovation in propane vehicle technology, and to provide student engineers with a hands-on learning experience. The student designs included LPG fuel storage and delivery systems, engine modifications (such as increased compression ratio by the use of domed pistons), a vapor fuel injection system, custom electronic controls, and specialized catalyst units. The vapor fuel injection system design included a vaporizer (for cold ambient temperatures) and port injection designed to inject LPG vapor at 276 kPa (40 psia). The LPG-fueled engine possessed performance and efficiency parameters as good as, or better than, the original gasoline-fueled engine.

The potential of biodiesel as a viable alternative to petroleum diesel has been driving experimental efforts to insure efficient, high-power, and low emissions operation for many years. Literature is rich with discussion about the differences in operation between biodiesel and petroleum diesel; often, however, these discussions focus on time averaged results that may not detect subtle differences in cycle-to-cycle operation. This aspect has motivated this research study, which compares certain combustion aspects of both fuels on a cycle-by-cycle basis. Thus, the objective of this experimental study is to link fuel property differences between biodiesel and petroleum diesel fuels to potential differences in cycle-to-cycle variability. Steady-state operation of a medium-duty diesel engine at nine different operating conditions, for each fuel, is discussed.

The desirable braking system of a land vehicle is that it can stop the vehicle or reduce the vehicle speed as quickly as possible, maintain the vehicle direction stable and recover kinetic energy of the vehicle as much as possible. In this paper, an electronically controlled braking system for EV and HEV has been proposed, which integrates regenerative braking, automatic control of the braking forces of front and rear wheels and wheels antilock function together. When failure occurs in the electric system, the braking system can function as a conventional man-actuated braking system. Control strategies for controlling the braking forces on front and rear wheels, regenerative braking and mechanical braking forces have been developed. The braking energy that can be potentially recovered in typical driving cycle has been calculated. The antilock performance of the braking system has been simulated.

A general design methodology of the fuel cell powered hybrid vehicle drive train has been developed. With the methodology and a computer simulation program, all of the systematic parameters can be designed, such as, the rated power of the electric motor drive, fuel cell system, peaking power source as well as the energy capacity. An overall control strategy has also been developed. The main function of the control strategy is to properly control the power produced by the fuel cell system and the peaking power source, so as to meet the power demand, maintain the energy level of the peaking power source in its optimal region and operate the fuel cell system within its high efficiency region. In this paper, a design example has also been introduced in each section.

The concept of hybrid drive trains was first developed for automobiles. These drive trains allow achieving a minimum fuel consumption by properly matching the driving requirements and the engine characteristics. In this paper the authors analyze the possibility of extending this concept to railway vehicles. Basic hybrid railway vehicles are designed and discussed.

Significant amount of energy is lost in frequent braking, automatic transmission and engine idling for a conventional engine powered passenger car while driving in cities. In this paper, a mild hybrid vehicle drive train has been introduced. It uses a small electric motor with floating stator, called TRANSMOTOR and small and a battery pack. The transmotor functions as a generator, engine starter, frictionless clutch (electric torque coupler), regenerative braking and propelling. The mild hybrid drive train can effectively reduce the urban-driving fuel consumption by regenerative braking, eliminate of energy losses in conventional automatic transmission and engine idling. The drive train can use low voltage system (42V for example), due to the low electric power rating, and is more similar to conventional drive train than full hybrid vehicle. Therefore, less effort is needed to evolve it from conventional vehicles.

In this paper, a mild hybrid drive train has been proposed. A small electric motor with low rated voltage (42 V) is used to (1) propel the vehicle at low speed, (2) replace the fluid-coupled torque converter and (3) realize regenerative braking. With proper design and control, the fuel economy in urban driving can be significantly improved without much change from conventional drive train to the mild hybrid drive train.

Their easy availability, lower well-to-wheel emissions, and relative ease of use with existing engine technologies have made ethanol and ethanol-gasoline blends a viable alternative to gasoline for use in spark-ignition (SI) engines. The lower energy density of ethanol and ethanol-gasoline blends, however, results in higher volumetric fuel consumption compared with gasoline. Also, the higher latent heat of vaporization can result in cold-start issues with higher-level ethanol blends. On the other hand, a higher octane number, which indicates resistance to knock and potentially enables more optimal combustion phasing, results in better engine efficiency, especially at higher loads. This paper compares the fuel consumption and emissions of two ethanol blends (E50 and E85) with those for gasoline when used in conventional (non-hybrid) and power-split-type plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

Internal combustion engines have dealt with increasingly restricted emissions requirements. After-treatment devices are successful bringing emissions into compliance, but in-cylinder combustion control can reduce their burden by reducing engine-out emissions. For example, oxides of nitrogen (NOx) are diesel combustion exhaust species of notoriety for their difficulty in after-treatment removal. In-cylinder conditions can be controlled for low levels of NOx, but this produces high levels of soot particulate matter (PM). The simultaneous reduction of NOx and PM can be realized through a combustion process known as low temperature combustion (LTC). This paper presents an investigation into the manifestation of LTC in the calculated heat release profile. Such a study could be important since some extreme LTC conditions may exhibit a return to the soot-NOx tradeoff, rendering an emissions-based definition of LTC unhelpful.

New dc to dc converter topologies are presented which are suitable for high density high power supplies. Topological variations of the basic inverse dual converter (IDC) circuit such as the transformer coupled, the multiphase and the multipulse derivation of the single phase IDC have been analysed and some simulation results have been presented. It has been shown in a recent publication [1] that the single phase IDC offers a buck-boost operation over wide range without transformer, bidirectional power flow, and complementary commutation of the switches. The topologies examined in this paper have additional features such as lower device and component stresses, and smaller filter requirements, resulting in smaller size and weight. Some performance and possible applications are also examined. Finally the IDCs for serial and parallel power distribution, and ac tapping of the IDC are discussed.

A fuel cell/battery hybrid system for an electric vehicle was characterized under simulated driving conditions. The fuel cell is a 72 cell stack with 270 cm2 per cell of active electrode area. It has a continuous output of 1500 Watts and a peak power of 3000 Watts operating on hydrogen and atmospheric pressure air. The batteries are a tubular flooded lead-acid type. Seven 6 volt modules were connected in series with each module having a normal capacity of 205 Ahr. The fuel cell battery hybrid system was laboratory tested using a variable load battery cycler to simulate electric vehicle operation over a Modified Simplified Federal Urban Driving Schedule (MSFUDS). The fuel cell/battery hybrid operated successfully under steady state and dynamic conditions with the performance of the fuel cell only slightly degraded under the dynamic conditions of MSFUDS compared to steady state operation.

Artificial Neural Network(ANN) techniques are used to develop a system to detect High Impedance Faults(HIFs) in electric power distribution lines. Encouraging results were observed with a simple Multi-layer Perceptron(MLP) trained with the backpropagation learning algorithm. Although the results are not significantly better than those reported with other algorithmic approaches, ANN techniques have potential advantages over the other approaches; namely, ability to train the system easily to accommodate different feeder characteristics, ability to adapt and so become a better detector with experience and better fault tolerance. When these features are incorporated, the system is expected to perform better than existing systems. The system we developed for the current phase, the training strategies used, the tests conducted and the results obtained are discussed in this paper. Also background discussions on existing HIF detection techniques, and ANN techniques can be found in this paper.

A empirically based mathematical model of a lead-acid battery for use in the Texas A&M University's Electrically Peaking Hybrid (ELPH) computer simulation is presented. The battery model is intended to overcome intuitive difficulties with currently available models by employing direct relationships between state-of-charge, voltage, and power demand. The model input is the power demand or load. Model outputs include voltage, an instantaneous battery efficiency coefficient and a state-of-charge indicator. A time and current dependent voltage hysteresis is employed to ensure correct voltage tracking inherent with the highly transient nature of a hybrid electric drivetrain.

This paper discusses a new computer simulation tool, V-Elph, which extends the capabilities of previous modeling and simulation efforts by facilitating in-depth studies of any type of hybrid or all electric configuration or energy management strategy through visual programming and by creating components as hierarchical subsystems which can be used interchangeably as embedded systems. V-Elph is composed of detailed models of four major types of components: electric motors, internal combustion engines, batteries, and vehicle dynamics which can be integrated to simulate drive trains having all electric, series hybrid, and parallel hybrid configurations. V-Elph was written in the Matlab/Simulink graphical simulation language and is portable to most computer platforms. A simulation study of a sustainable, electrically-peaking hybrid-electric vehicle was performed to illustrate the applicability of V-Elph to hybrid and electric vehicle design.

A key element to achieving vehicle emission certification for most light-duty vehicles using spark-ignition engine technology is prompt catalyst warming. Emission mitigation largely does not occur while the catalyst is below its “light-off temperature”, which takes a certain time to achieve when the engine starts from a cold condition. If the catalyst takes too long to light-off, the vehicle could fail its emission certification; it is necessary to minimize the catalyst warm up period to mitigate emissions as quickly as possible. One technique used to minimize catalyst warm up is to calibrate the engine in such a way that it delivers high temperature exhaust. At idle or low speed/low-load conditions, this can be done by retarding spark timing with a corresponding increase in fuel flow rate and / or leaning the mixture. Both approaches, however, encounter limits as combustion stability degrades and / or nitrogen oxide emissions rise excessively.

The often-observed differences in nitrogen oxides, or NOx, emissions between biodiesel and petroleum diesel fuels in diesel engines remain intense topics of research. In several instances, biodiesel-fuelled engines have higher NOx emissions than petroleum-fuelled engines; a situation often referred to as the "biodiesel NOx penalty." The literature is rich with investigations that reveal many fundamental mechanisms which contribute to (in varying and often inverse ways) the manifestation of differences in NOx emissions; these mechanisms include, for example, differences in ignition delay, changes to in-cylinder radiation heat transfer, and unequal heating values between the fuels. In addition to fundamental mechanisms, however, are the effects of "system-response" issues.