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The hydraulic retarder is the most stabilized auxiliary braking system [1-2] of heavy-duty vehicles. When the hydraulic retarder is working during auxiliary braking, all of the braking energy is transferred into the thermal energy of the transmission medium of the working wheel. Theoretically, the residual heat-sinking capability of the engine could be used to cool down the transmission medium of the hydraulic retarder, in order to ensure the proper functioning of the hydraulic retarder. Never the less, the hydraulic retarder is always placed at the tailing head of the gearbox, far from the engine, long cooling circuits, which increases the risky leakage risk of the transmission medium. What's more, the development trend of heavy load and high speed vehicle directs the significant increase in the thermal load of the hydraulic retarder, which even higher than the engine power.

In automatic driving application, the velocity planner can be considered as a key factor to ensure the safety and comfort. One of the most important tasks of the velocity planner is to simulate the velocity characteristics of human drivers. In this paper, two Driver In-the-Loop (DIL) experiments are designed to explain velocity characteristics of human drivers. In the first experiment, static obstacles are placed on both sides of the straight road to shorten the cross range that vehicles can driver across. Moreover, different cross ranges are set to study the influence of the steering wheel error. In the second experiment, velocity characteristics are investigated under the condition of different road widths and curvatures in a U-turn road contour. In both tests, different drivers’ preview behavior is analyzed through the operation of throttle, braking, and steering.

In heavy truck driveline system, the components often include clutch, transmission, transfer case, drive shaft, etc. A fluid torque converter could be equipped in front of the transmission in order to improve the starting performance. Meanwhile, a hydraulic retarder could be introduced for auxiliary braking so as to adapt the truck to the brake on long downgrade in mountainous regions. Thus, the driveline heat load would have a notable increase. Both the fluid torque converter and the hydraulic retarder would produce a large quantity of heat, and a special cooling system is needed for adjusting the transmission fluid temperature with which the gains are potentially very large [1]. The heat load for driveline is often calculated based on empirical formula. For the heavy truck, however, if the heat value is underestimated, driveline components would suffer from overheated damage.

Vehicle hydraulic retarders are applied in heavy-duty trucks and buses as an auxiliary braking device. In traditional cooling systems of hydraulic retarders, the working fluid is introduced into the heat exchanger to transfer heat to the cooling liquid in circulation, whose heat is then dissipated by the engine cooling system. This prevents the waste heat of the working fluid from being used effectively. In hydraulic retarder cooling system based on the Organic Rankine Cycle, the organic working fluid first transfers heat with the hydraulic retarder working fluid in Rankine cycle, and then outputs power through expansion machine. It can both reduce heat load of the engine cooling system, and enhance thermal stability of the hydraulic retarder while recovering and utilizing braking energy. First of all, according to the target vehicle model, hydraulic retarder cooling system model based on Rankine cycle is established.

In order to obtain the comprehensive evaluation of thermal management system for the retarder, the complete driveline thermal management model is built. The characteristic parameters for the thermal management system are determined and the hydromechanical characteristics for the retarder are fixed by the rig test. On the basis of the same whole vehicle driving cycle, comparing to the traditional mechanical-drive system, the independent-drive system makes the working temperature of the heat source more stable. Meanwhile the parasitic power caused by the radiator fan is decreased markedly on the condition that the heat reject requirement of the heat source is satisfied.

In order to perform differential control instead of the mechanical differential and improve the steering performance of distributed electric vehicles, a two-level differential speed steering control strategy is proposed. Firstly, an upper-layer controller to track the yaw rate is designed based on PID feedback and 3-D lookup table model, which could shorten the response time and reduce the impact of model parameters mismatch. Then, in order to improve the robustness to external disturbances and parameter uncertainties, a lower-layer controller to track the wheel speed is proposed based on integral sliding mode control. Moreover, three simulations are conducted to validate the proposed strategy. The first simulation results indicate that the driving torques of the inner and outer wheels are distributed properly to avoid wheel slip. In the second simulation, when the conventional steering system fails, the proposed control strategy could avoid vehicle losing steering function.

With the improvement of occupants’ awareness on the driving safety, hydraulic retarder applications increase quickly. The traditional hydraulic retarder, on the one hand, exhausts the waste heat of transmission oil by the engine cooling system; on the other hand, the engine power should be consumed to drive the water pump and the engine cooling fan for maintaining the normal operation of the auxiliary braking system. In this study, the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) instead of the traditional hydraulic retarder water-cooling system is applied to achieve the effective temperature control of the hydraulic retarder, while the waste heat of transmission oil could be recovered for saving vehicle energy consumption. The ORC fluid selection needs comprehensive consideration for the net power of the ORC and the optimal temperature range of the retarder transmission oil at both the inlet and outlet end, which is the key issue to ensure the stability and efficiency of the ORC system performance.

In order to improve the driving experience of drivers and the efficiency of vehicle development, a method of objective drivability for passenger car powertrain is proposed, which is based on prior knowledge, principal component analysis (PCA) and SMART principle. First, drivability parameters of powertrain for passenger cars are determined according to working principle of powertrain, including engine torque, engine speed, gearbox position, accelerate pedal, brake pedal, steering wheel angle, longitudinal acceleration and lateral acceleration, etc. The drivability quantitative index system is designed based on field test data, prior knowledge and SMART principles. Then, D-S evidence theory and sliding window method are applied to identify objective drivability evaluation conditions of powertrain for passenger cars, including static gearshift conditions, starting conditions, creep conditions, tip-in, tip out, upshift conditions, acceleration, downshift conditions and de-acceleration.