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Ride control of military vehicles is challenging due to varied terrain and mission requirements such as operating weight. Achieving top speeds on rough terrain is typically considered a key performance parameter, which is always constrained by ride discomfort. Many military vehicles using passive suspensions suffer with compromised performance due to single tuning solution. To further stretch the performance domain to achieving higher speeds on rough roads, semi-active suspensions may offer a wide range of damping possibilities under varying conditions. In this paper, various semi-active control strategies are examined, and improvements have been made, particularly, to the acceleration-driven damper (ADD) strategy to make the approach more robust for varying operating conditions. A seven degrees of freedom ride model and a quarter-car model were developed that were excited by a random road process input modeled using an auto-regressive time series model.

Conventional viscous shock absorbers, in parallel with suspension springs, passively dissipate the excitation energy from road irregularity into heat waste, to reduce the transferred vibration which causes the discomfort of passengers. Energy-harvesting shock absorbers, which have the potential of conversion of kinetic energy into electric power, have been proposed as semi-active suspension to achieve better balance between the energy consumption and suspension performance. Because of the high energy density of the rotary shock absorber, a rotational energy-harvesting shock absorber with mechanical motion rectifier (MMR) is used in this paper. This paper presents the assessment of vehicle dynamic performance with the proposed energy-harvesting shock absorber in braking process. Moreover, a PI controller is proposed to attenuate the negative effect due to the pitch motion.

The objective of this work is to provide a relatively simple battery energy storage and loss model that can be used for technology screening and design/sizing studies of hybrid electric vehicle powertrains. The model dynamic input requires only power demand from the battery terminals (either charging or discharging), and outputs internal battery losses, state-of-charge (SOC), and pack temperature. Measured data from a vehicle validates the model, which achieves reasonable accuracy for current levels up to 100 amps for the size battery tested. At higher current levels, the model tends to report a higher current than what is needed to create the same power level shown through the measured data. Therefore, this battery model is suitable for evaluating hybrid vehicle technology and energy use for part load drive cycles.

This work pertains to laboratory testing of truck cab suspensions for the purpose of improving in-cab ride quality. It describes the testing procedure of a complete truck cab suspension while still being mounted on the vehicle. It allows for testing with minimal amount of resources, limited to two mobile actuators and minimal modifications to the stock vehicle. The actuators can be attached to any axle through a set of modified brake drums and excite the drive axle in a vertical plane. The excitation signal sent to the actuators can be in phase for a heave type motion or out of phase for a roll motion. The chassis shock absorbers are replaced with rigid links to prevent the actuator input from becoming filtered by the primary suspension. This allows the input to reach the cab suspension more directly and the cab to be excited across a broader range of frequencies.

This study pertains to motion control algorithms using statistical calculations based on relative displacement measurements, in particular where the rattle space is strictly limited by fixed end-stops and a load leveling system that allows for roll to go undetected by the sensors. One such application is the cab suspension of semi trucks that use widely-spaced springs and dampers and a load leveling system that is placed between the suspensions, near the center line of the cab. In such systems it is possible for the suspension on the two sides of the vehicle to settle at different ride heights due to uneven loading or the crown of the road. This paper will compare the use of two moving average signals (one positive and one negative) to the use of one root mean square (RMS) signal, all calculated based on the relative displacement measurement.

A detailed study of the effects of shim stack assemblies on performance of hydraulic mono-tube vehicle shock absorbers is presented. Currently, shim stacks are modeled as blow-off valves in hydraulic models of shock absorbers. Using this simplification, important material and geometrical properties of shim stacks cannot be studied and their effects cannot be understood on overall damper performance. In this paper, shim stack deflection is investigated and a mathematical model is presented for shim stack deflection. This model is then incorporated into the mathematical model of a hydraulic damper and various properties of shim stack and their effects on damper characteristics are studied. Energy and variational methods were used to develop the mathematical model of the shim stack. The mathematical model also takes into account the sliding effects of the shims on each other when the shim stack is deflected.

Inerters have become a hot topic in recent years, especially in vehicle, train, and building suspension systems. The performance of a passive inerter and a semi-active inerter was analyzed and compared with each other and it showed that the semi-active inerter has much better performance than the passive inerter, especially with the Hybrid control method. Eight different layouts of suspensions were analyzed with a quarter car model in this paper. The adaptation of dimensionless parameters was considered for a semi-active suspension and the semi-active inerters. The performance of the semi-active inerter suspensions with different layouts was compared with a semi-active suspension with a conventional parallel spring-damper arrangement. It shows a semi-active suspension, with more simple configuration and lower cost, has similar or better compromise between ride and handling than a semi-active inerter with the Hybrid control.

The performance of five different skyhook control methods is studied experimentally, using a quarter-car rig. The control methods that are analyzed include: skyhook control, groundhook control, hybrid control, displacement skyhook, and relative displacement skyhook. Upon evaluating the performance of each method in frequency domain for various control conditions, they are compared with each other as well as with passive damping. The results indicate that no one control method outperforms other control methods at both the sprung and unsprung mass natural frequencies. Each method can perform better than the other control methods in some respect. Hybrid control, however, comes close to providing the best compromise between different dynamic demands on a primary suspension. The results indicate that hybrid control can offer benefits to both the sprung and unsprung mass with control gain settings that provide equal contributions from skyhook control and groundhook control.

Skyhook control has been used extensively for semiactive dampers for a variety of applications, most widely for passenger vehicle suspensions. This paper provides an experimental evaluation of how well skyhook control works for improving roll stability of a passenger vehicle. After discussing the formulation for various semiactive control methods that have been suggested in the past for vehicle suspensions, the paper includes the implementation of a semiactive system with magneto-rheological (MR) dampers on a sport utility vehicle. The vehicle is used for a series of road tests that includes lane change maneuvers, with different types of suspensions. The suspensions that are tested include the stock suspension, the uncontrolled MR dampers, skyhook control, and a new semiactive control method called “SIA skyhook.” The SIA Skyhook augments the conventional skyhook control with steering input, in order to account for the suspension requirements during a lateral maneuver.

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) is currently developing a control strategy for a parallel plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). The hybrid powertrain is being implemented in a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro for the EcoCAR 3 competition. Fuzzy rule sets determine the torque split between the motor and the engine using the accelerator pedal position, vehicle speed and state of charge (SOC) as the input variables. The torque producing components are a 280 kW V8 L83 engine with active fuel management (AFM) and a post-transmission (P3) 100 kW custom motor. The vehicle operates in charge depleting (CD) and charge sustaining (CS) modes. In CD mode, the model drives as an electric vehicle (EV) and depletes the battery pack till a lower state of charge threshold is reached. Then CS operation begins, and driver demand is supplied by the engine operating in V8 or AFM modes with supplemental or loading torque from the P3 motor.

The more electric aircraft (MEA) concept has gained popularity in recent years. As the main building blocks of advanced aircraft power systems, multi-converter power electronic systems have advantages in reliability, efficiency and weight reduction. The pulsed power load has been increasingly adopted--especially in military applications--and has demonstrated highly nonlinear characteristics. Consequently, more design effort needs to be placed on power conversion units and energy storage systems dealing with this challenging mission profile: when the load is on, a large amount of power is fed from the power supply system, and this is followed by periods of low power consumption, during which time the energy storage devices get charged. Thus, in order to maintain the weight advantage of MEA and to keep the normal functionality of the aircraft power system in the presence of a high-peak pulsed power load, this paper proposes a novel multidisciplinary weight optimization technique.

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) is participating in the 2008 - 2011 EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition series organized by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and sponsored by General Motors (GM) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). Following GM's vehicle development process, HEVT established goals that meet or exceed the competition requirements for EcoCAR in the design of a plug-in, range-extended hybrid electric vehicle. The challenge involves designing a crossover SUV powertrain to reduce fuel consumption, petroleum energy use and well-to-wheels (WTW) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In order to interface with and control the vehicle, the team added a National Instruments (NI) CompactRIO (cRIO) to act as a hybrid vehicle supervisory controller (HVSC).

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) is participating in the 2009 - 2011 EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition series organized by Argonne National Lab (ANL), and sponsored by General Motors Corporation (GM), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Following GM's Vehicle Development Process (VDP), HEVT established team goals that meet or exceed the competition requirements for EcoCAR in the design of a plug-in extended-range hybrid electric vehicle. The competition requires participating teams to improve and redesign a stock Vue XE donated by GM. The result of this design process is an Extended-Range Electric Vehicle (E-REV) that uses grid electric energy and E85 fuel for propulsion. The vehicle design is predicted to achieve an SAE J1711 utility factor corrected fuel consumption of 2.9 L(ge)/100 km (82 mpgge) with an estimated all electric range of 69 km (43 miles) [1].

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) is participating in the 2009 - 2011 EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition series organized by Argonne National Lab (ANL), and sponsored by General Motors Corporation (GM), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Following GM's Vehicle Development Process (VDP), HEVT established team goals that meet or exceed the competition requirements for EcoCAR in the design of a plug-in extended range hybrid electric vehicle. The competition requires participating teams to re-engineer a stock crossover utility vehicle donated by GM. The result of this design process is an Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV) that uses grid electric energy and E85 fuel for propulsion. The vehicle design has achieved an SAE J1711 utility factor corrected fuel consumption of 2.9 L(ge)/100 km (82 mpgge) with an all-electric range of 87 km (54 miles) [1].

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) is participating in the 2012 - 2014 EcoCAR 2: Plugging in to the Future Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition series organized by Argonne National Lab (ANL), and sponsored by General Motors Corporation (GM), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The goals of the competition are to reduce well-to-wheel (WTW) petroleum energy consumption, WTW greenhouse gas and criteria emissions while maintaining vehicle performance, consumer acceptability and safety. Following the EcoCAR 2 Vehicle Development Process (VDP), HEVT will design, build, and refine an advanced technology vehicle over the course of the three year competition using a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu donated by GM as a base vehicle. In year 1 of the competition, HEVT has designed a powertrain to meet and exceed the goals of the competition.

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech participated in the three-year EcoCAR Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition organized by Argonne National Laboratory, and sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy. The team established goals for the design of a plug-in, range-extended hybrid electric vehicle that meets or exceeds the competition requirements for EcoCAR. The challenge involved designing a crossover SUV powertrain to reduce fuel consumption, petroleum energy use, regulated tailpipe emissions, and well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions. To interface with and control the hybrid powertrain, the team added a Hybrid Vehicle Supervisory Controller, which enacts a torque split control strategy. This paper builds on an earlier paper [1] that evaluated the petroleum energy use, criteria tailpipe emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions of the Virginia Tech EcoCAR vehicle and control strategy from the 2nd year of the competition.

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team (HEVT) of Virginia Tech is participating in the 2011-2014 EcoCAR 2 competition in which the team is tasked with re-engineering the powertrain of a GM donated vehicle. The primary goals of the competition are to reduce well to wheels (WTW) petroleum energy use (PEU) and reduce WTW greenhouse gas (GHG) and criteria emissions while maintaining performance, safety, and consumer acceptability. To meet these goals HEVT has designed a series parallel plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) with multiple modes of operation. This paper will first cover development of the control system architecture with a dual CAN bus structure to meet the requirements of the vehicle architecture. Next an online optimization control strategy to minimize fuel consumption will be developed. A simple vehicle plant model will then be used for software-in-the-loop (SIL) testing to improve fuel economy.

A crucial step to designing and building more efficient vehicles is modeling powertrain energy consumption. While accurate modeling is indeed key to effective and efficient design, a fundamental understanding of the powertrain and auxiliary systems that contribute to the energy consumption of a vehicle is equally as important. This paper presents a methodology that has been packaged into a tool, called VTool (short for Vehicle Tool), which can be used to estimate the energy consumption of a vehicle powertrain. The method is intrinsically designed to foster understanding of the vehicle powertrain as it relates to energy consumption and losses while still providing reasonably accurate results. This paper briefly explains the methodology of VTool and demonstrates the capability of VTool as a design tool by presenting 4 example exercises.

Road departures are one of the most deadly crash modes, accounting for nearly one third of all crash fatalities in the US. Lane departure warning (LDW) systems can warn the driver of the departure and lane departure prevention (LDP) systems can steer the vehicle back into the lane. One purpose of these systems is to reduce the quantity of road departure crashes. This paper presents a method to predict the maximum effectiveness of these systems. Thirty-nine (39) real world crashes from the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) Crashworthiness Data System (CDS) database were reconstructed using pre-crash velocities downloaded for each case from the vehicle event data recorder (EDR). The pre-crash velocities were mapped onto the vehicle crash trajectory. The simulations assumed a warning was delivered when the lead tire crossed the lane line. Each case was simulated twice with driver reaction times of 0.38 s and 1.36 s after which time the driver began steering back toward the road.

The pre-prototype development of a simulated rule-based hybrid energy management strategy for a 2019 Chevrolet Blazer RS converted parallel P4 full hybrid is presented. A vehicle simulation model is developed using component bench data and validated using EPA-reported dynamometer fuel economy test data. A combined Willans line model is proposed for the engine and transmission, with hybrid control rules based on efficiency-derived engine power thresholds. Algorithms are proposed for battery state of charge (SOC) management including engine loading and one pedal strategies, with battery SOC maintained within 20% to 80% safe limits and charge balanced behavior achieved. The simulated rule-based hybrid control strategy for the hybrid vehicle has an energy consumption reduction of 20% for the Hot 505, 3.6% for the HwFET, and 12% for the US06 compared to the stock vehicle.