Search Results

This paper presents the design and performance details of electric propulsion system for GM's second generation Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV). First generation Chevrolet Volts have been driven over half a billion miles in North America from October 2013 through September 2014, 74% of which were all-electric. The second generation of Volt brings a significant mass reduction and increased performance, EV driving range and fuel economy while simultaneously reducing rare earth content in its traction electric motors. The electric propulsion system is built on two electric machines; both PMAC topology. While hybrid-electric vehicles are gaining in popularity in hopes of addressing cleaner, energy sustainable technology in transportation, materials sustainability and rare earth dependence mitigation has not been the first priority in the hybrids available on the market today.

Engine downsizing and super/turbocharging is currently the most followed trend in order to reduce CO2 emissions and increase the powertrain efficiency. A key challenge for achieving the desired fuel economy benefits lies in optimizing the design and control of the engine boosting system, which requires the ability to rapidly sort different design options and technologies in simulation, evaluating their impact on engine performance and fuel consumption. This paper presents a scalable modeling approach for the characterization of flow and efficiency maps for automotive turbochargers. Starting from the dimensional analysis theory for turbomachinery and a set of well-known control-oriented models for turbocharged engines simulation, a novel scalable model is proposed to predict the flow and efficiency maps of centrifugal compressors and radial inflow turbines as function of their key design parameters.

A linear parameter varying (LPV) reduced order model (ROM) is used to approximate the volume-averaged temperature of battery cells in one of the modules of the battery pack with varying mass flow rate of cooling fluid using uniform heat source as inputs. The ROM runs orders of magnitude faster than the original CFD model. To reduce the time it takes to generate training data, used in building LPV ROM, a divide-and-conquer approach is introduced. This is done by dividing the battery module into a series of mid-cell and end-cell units. A mid-cell unit is composed of a cooling channel sandwiched in between two half -cells. A half-cell has half as much heat capacity as a full-cell. An end-cell unit is composed of a cooling channel sandwiched in between full-cell and a half-cell. A mass flow rate distribution look-up-table is generated from a set of steady-state simulations obtained by running the full CFD model at different inlet manifold mass flow rate samples.

In this paper, the problem of stability control of an electric vehicle is addressed. To this aim, it is required that the vehicle follows a desired yaw rate at all driving/road conditions. The desired yaw rate is calculated based on steering angle, vehicle speed, vehicle geometric properties as well as road conditions. The vehicle response is modified by torque vectoring on front and/or rear axles. This control problem is subject to several constraints. The electric motors can only deliver a certain amount of torque at a given rotational speed. In addition, the tire capacity also plays an important role. It limits the amount of torque they can transfer without causing wheel to slip excessively. These constraints make the Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach a suitable choice, because it can explicitly consider the constraints of the control problem, in particular the tire capacity constraint, and help prevent tire saturation, which is often the cause of vehicle instability.

Instances have occurred where the outer surface of turbocharger fully floating journal bearing bushings have exhibited damage from oil debris resulting in constant tone noise and subsequent warranty claims. This paper studies the effect of oil debris in Turbocharger journal bearings on Subsynchronous NVH. A CFD model is built to study the behavior of oil debris particles with different sizes. It is found that the dominant centrifugal forces prevent larger particles from reaching the inner film while smaller particles travel more easily to the inner film. It is also found that the turbine side is more likely to become damaged from debris than the compressor side bearing due to higher temperatures. A tribology analysis shows that oil debris particles in the outer film will reduce the speed ratio, while oil debris particles in inner film will increase the speed ratio. The tribology analysis also predicts the effects of oil debris on bearing stiffness and damping.