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A passive thermal management system (TMS) using composite phase change material (PCM) for large-capacity, rectangular lithium-ion batteries is designed. A battery module consisting of six Li-ion cells connected in series was investigated as a basic unit. The passive TMS for the module has three configurations according to the contact area between cells and the composite PCM, i.e., surrounding, front-contacted and side-contacted schemes. Firstly, heat generation rate of the battery cell was calculated using the Bernardi equation based on experimentally measured heat source terms (i.e. the internal resistance and the entropy coefficient). Physical and thermal properties such as density, phase change temperature, latent heat and thermal conductivity of the composite PCM were also obtained by experimental methods. Thereafter, thermal response of the battery modules with the three TMS configurations was simulated using 3D finite element analysis (FEA) modeling in ANSYS Fluent.

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.

CuO-water nanofluids was utilized as heat transfer medium in the cooling system of the diesel engine. By using CFD-Fluent software, for 0.5%, 1%, 3% and 5% mass concentration of nanofluids, 3-dimensional numerical simulation about flow and heat transfer process in the cooling system of engine was actualized. According to stochastic particle tracking in turbulent flow, for solid-liquid two phase flow discrete phase, the moving track of nanoparticles was traced. By this way, for CuO nanoparticles of different mass concentration nanofliuds in the cooling jacket of diesel engine, the results of the concentration distribution, velocity distribution, internal energy variation, resident time, total heat transfer and variation of total pressure reduction between inlet and outlet were ascertained.

Crashworthiness is one of the most important performances of vehicles, and the front rails are the main crash energy absorption parts during the frontal crashing process. In this paper, the front rail was simplified to a thin-walled beam with a cross section of single-hat which was made of steel and aluminum. And the two boards of it were connected by riveting without rivets. In order to optimize its crashworthiness, the thickness (t), radius (R) and the rivet spacing (d) were selected as three design variables, and its specific energy absorption was the objective while the average impact force was the constraint. Considering the error of manufacturing and measurements, the parameters σs and Et of the steel were selected as the uncertainty variables to improve the design reliability. The algorithm IP-GA and the approximate model-RBF (Radial Basis Function) were applied in this nonlinear uncertainty optimization.

Turbochargers improve performance in internal combustion engines. Due to low production costs, TC assemblies are supported on floating ring bearings. In current lubrication analysis of floating ring bearing, inner and outer oil film are usually supposed to be adiabatic. The heat generated by frictional power is carried out by the lubricant flow. In reality, under real operating conditions, there existed heat transfer between the inner and outer film. In this paper, the lubrication performance of floating ring bearing when considering heat transfer between inner film and outer film is studied. The lubrication model of the floating ring is established and the heat transferred through the ring between the inner and outer film is calculated. The calculation results show that heat flow between the inner and outer film under different outer film eccentricity ratio and rotate ratio has a large difference.

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.

In order to study the fast filling problem of large-capacity on-board hydrogen storage tank for highway passenger cars, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation model of 134L large-capacity hydrogen storage tank was established. By simulating different pre-cooling temperatures and mass flow rates, the temperature distribution and thermal transmission in the tank were observed. Due to the large ratio of length to diameter of the hydrogen tank, the temperature distribution is extremely uneven during the whole filling process, and the high temperature area is mainly concentrated in the tank tail. And the heat transfer between the gas and the tank wall is not obvious under the low and constant mass flow rate. The temperature rise process during the whole filling process under different mass flow conditions was simulated to satisfy the highest safe temperature limit.

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.

Water and thermal management is an essential issue that influences performance and durability of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Water content in membrane decides its ionic conductivity and membrane swelling favors the ionic conductivity, resulting in decreases in the membrane’s ohmic resistance and improvement in the output voltage. However, if excessive liquid water can’t be removed out of cell quickly, it will fill in the pores of catalyst layer (CL) and gas diffusion layer (GDL) then flooding may occur. It is essential to keep the water content in membrane at a proper level. In this work, a transient isothermal one-dimensional model is developed to investigate effects of the relative humidity of inlet gas and cell temperature on performance of a PEMFC.

The thermophysical parameters and amount of composite phase change materials (PCMs) have decisive influence on the thermal control effects of thermal management systems (TMSs). At the same time, the various thermophysical parameters of the composite PCM are interrelated. For example, increasing the thermal conductivity is bound to mean a decrease in the latent heat of phase change, so a balance needs to be achieved between these parameters. In this paper, a prismatic LiFePO4 battery cell cooled by composite PCM is comprehensively analyzed by changing the phase change temperature, thermal conductivity and amount of composite PCM. The influence of the composite PCM parameters on the cooling and temperature homogenization effect of the TMS is analyzed. which can give useful guide to the preparation of composite PCMs and design of the heat transfer enhancement methods for TMSs.

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.

Hot forming process of ultrahigh strength boron steel 22MnB5 is widely applied in vehicle industry. It is one of the most effective approaches for vehicle light weighting. Dynamic recovery is the major softening mechanism of the boron steel under austenite state at elevated temperatures. Deformation mechanism of the boron steel can be revealed by investigation on the behavior of dynamic recovery, which could also improve the accuracy of forming simulations for hot stamping. Uniaxial tensile experiments of the boron steel are carried out on the thermo-mechanical simulator Gleeble3800 at elevated temperatures. The true stress-strain curves and the relations between the work hardening rate and flow stress are obtained in different deformation conditions. The work hardening rate decreases linearly with increasing the flow stress.

A computational study was conducted in order to characterize the heat transfers in a sedan vehicle underbody and the exhaust system. A steady-state analysis with consideration for both the radiation and conjugate heat transfers was undertaken using the High-Reynolds formulation of the k-epsilon turbulence model with standard wall function and the DO model for the radiation heat transfer. All three mechanisms of heat transfer, i.e., convection, conduction, and radiation, were included in the analysis. The convective heat transfer due to turbulent fluid motion was modeled with the assumption of constant turbulent Prandtl number; and heat conduction was solved directly for both fluid and solid.

The multi-body dynamics simulation and physical iteration were carried out based on the 4-channel road simulation bench, the solution of fatigue test bench which was suitable for cab with frame and suspension was designed. Large load and displacement above the suspension can be loaded on the test bench, and the same weak position of cab exposed on the road test can be assessed well on the fatigue test bench. The effectiveness of the bench test solution was verified though comparative study. And it has important reference for the same type of cab assembly with suspension in the fatigue bench test. According to the durability specifications of cab assembly, a multi-body dynamics model with a satisfactory accuracy was built. And the fixture check and virtual iteration analysis were used to verify the effectiveness of the solution. According to the road load signal analysis and multi-body dynamics analysis results, the test bench with linear guide and spherical joint was built.

As one of the most crucial components in electric vehicles, power batteries generate abundant heat during charging and discharging processes. Thermal management system (TMS), which is designed to keep the battery cells within an optimum temperature range and to maintain an even temperature distribution from cell to cell, is vital for the high efficiency, long calendar life and reliable safety of these power batteries. With the desirable features of low system complexity, light weight, high energy efficiency and good battery thermal uniformity, thermal management using composite phase change materials (PCMs) has drawn great attention in the past fifteen years. In the hope of supplying helpful guidelines for the design of the PCM-based TMSs, this work begins with the summarization of the most commonly applied heat transfer enhancement methods (i.e., the use of thermally conductive particles, metal fin, expanded graphite matrix and metal foam) for PCMs by different researchers.

Traditional active suspension which is equipped with hydraulic actuator or pneumatic actuator features slow response and high power consumption. However, electromagnetic actuated active suspension benefits quick response and energy harvesting from vibration at the same time. To design a novel active and energy regenerative suspension (AERS) utilizing electromagnetic actuator, this paper investigates the benchmark cars available on the market and summaries the suspension features. Basing on the investigation, a design reference for AERS design is proposed. To determine the parameters of the actuator, a principle is proposed and the parameters of the actuator are designed accordingly. Compared the linear type and rotary type Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM), the rotary type is selected to construct the actuator of the AERS. Basing on the suspension structure of the design reference model and utilizing rotary type PMSM, a novel AERS structure is proposed.

The conventional crash box with thin-walled column conceals some limitations on pedestrian protection and lightweight. The metallic NPR metamaterials designed in this study are based on re-entrant lattice structures. Re-entrant structures are known to be one main class of axenic structures that display negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR), which can be manufactured by 3D printing technology. This kind of metamaterial has good designability and can be used as the filling structure of the crash box to improve the crashworthiness of the car. This paper starts from the relations between geometric parameters of the metamaterial. Considering the deformation characteristics of the crash box, the structure were designed into some gradient types. The mechanical properties of different gradient structures under the same impact conditions were compared to find the proper gradient structures. Based on the studies, the gradient lattice structure is applied to the automobile crash box.

In this study, effects of altitude on free diesel spray morphology, macroscopic spray characteristics and air-fuel mixing process were investigated. The diesel spray visualization experiment using high-speed photography was performed in a constant volume chamber which reproduced the injection diesel-like thermodynamic conditions of a heavy-duty turbocharged diesel engine operating at sea level and 1000 m, 2000 m, 3000 m and 4500 m above sea level. The results showed that the spray morphology became narrower and longer at higher altitude, and small vortex-like structures were observed on the downstream spray periphery. Spray penetration increased and spray angle decreased with increasing altitude. At altitudes of 0 m, 1000 m, 2000 m, 3000 m and 4500 m, the spray penetration at 1.45 ms after start of injection (ASOI) were 79.54 mm, 80.51 mm, 81.49 mm, 83.29 mm and 88.92 mm respectively, and the spray angle were 10.9°, 10.8°, 10.7°, 10.4°and 9.8° respectively.

Engine compartment thermal management can achieve energy saving and emission reduction. The structural design of the components in the engine compartment affects the thermal fluid flow performance, which in turn affects the thermal management performance. In this paper, based on the phenomenon that the surface of the parts in the engine compartment is abnormally high due to design defects of an SUV engine compartment bottom shield, the engine compartment is modeled and analyzed by CFD using the software STAR-CCM+. It is not conducive to the heat dissipation, so the bottom shield needs to be redesigned. To redesign the shape of the bottom shield, four dimensions and one coordinate value were selected as the design parameters, and the oil pan maximum surface temperature was selected as the optimization target. The Latin hypercube sampling method was used to sample the space uniformly, and the experimental design plan was constructed and simulated.

Improving the heat dissipation performance of the engine radiator in the real working environment is of great significance to the cooling of the engines. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of the radiator’s geometric parameters on its heat dissipation performance in the cooling module environment and optimize the geometric parameters to improve the heat dissipation performance of the radiator. Based on the performance data obtained from relevant component tests and the engine thermal balance test, the simulation model of the engine thermal management system is established, and the reliability of the model is verified. The heat dissipation performances of the single radiator and the radiator in the cooling module are compared by using the validated model.