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The lightweight design of a vehicle can save manufacturing costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the off-road vehicle and truck, the chassis frame is the most important load-bearing assembly of the separate frame construction vehicle. The frame is one of the most assemblies with great potential to be lightweight optimized. However, most of the vehicle components are mounted on the frame, such as the engine, transmission, suspension, steering system, radiator, and vehicle body. Therefore, boundaries and constraints should be taken into consideration during the optimal process. The finite element (FE) model is widely used to simulate and assess the frame performance. The performance of the frame is determined by the design parameters. As one of the largest components of the vehicle, it has a lot of parameters. To improve the optimum efficiency, sensitivity analysis is used to narrow the range of the variables.

Semi-active suspension has been widely applied in commercial vehicle suspension in order to get good riding comfortableness. Fuzzy logic control (FLC) has been widely applied in the field of kinetic control because control rule of FLC is easy to understand. But the gain of fuzzy rules and adjustment of membership functions usually depend on experts' experiences and repeated experiments, thus the fuzzy rules and membership functions has strong subjectivity, also are easily affected by environment of experiments, so the main problem of fuzzy logic controller design is selection and optimization of fuzzy rules and membership functions. Genetic Algorithms (GA) is the algorithm that searches the optimal solution through simulating natural evolutionary process and is one of the evolution algorithms which have most extensive impact.

In this paper, we propose a method of dynamics simulation and analysis based on superelement modeling to increase the efficiency of dynamics simulation for vehicle body structure. Using this method, a certain multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) body structure was divided into several subsystems, and the modal parameters and frequency response functions of which were obtained through superelement condensation, residual structure solution, and superelement data restoration. The study shows that compared to the traditional modeling method, the computational time for vehicle body modal analysis can be reduced by 6.9% without reducing accuracy; for the purpose of structural optimization, the computational time can be reduced by 87.7% for frequency response analyses of optimizations; consistency between simulation and testing can be achieved on peak frequency points and general trends for the vibration frequency responses of interior front row floors under accelerating conditions.

This paper presents a novel application of hydraulic electromagnetic energy-regenerative shock absorber (HESA) into commercial vehicle suspension system and vehicle road performance are simulated by the evaluating indexes (e.g. root-mean-square values of vertical acceleration of sprung mass, dynamic tire-ground contact force, suspension deflection and harvested power; maximum values of pitch angle and roll angle). Firstly, the configuration and working principle of HESA are introduced. Then, the damping characteristics of HESA and the seven-degrees-of-freedom vehicle dynamics were modeled respectively before deriving the dynamic characteristics of a vehicle equipped with HESA. The control current is fixed at 7A to match the similar damping effect of traditional damper on the basis of energy conversion method of nonlinear shock absorber.

The brake performance is one of the most important performances in the automotive active safety, and it is the main measure of automotive active safety. Thus, to develop a platform for the braking system is quite significant. Based on the object-oriented technology, the platform for braking system is developed by making use of Visual C++ 6.0 development tool. By using the VC++ development tool and doing secondary development on other softwares, the software possesses powerful features, such as brake plan selection, performance calculation, parametric modeling, finite element analysis and kinematics simulation, etc. An initial brake system can be designed, calculated and analyzed all in one. The living instance shows that the platform has friendly user interfaces, powerful functions and it can improve the precision and efficiency of brake design. The platform has been of great applied value and can also positively promote the design automation of vehicle's braking system.

The basic principle of wavelet transform is presented and the method of wavelet theory is used in vibration signal analysis of vehicle in this paper. The vibration signals which generated in the locations such as cab floor, engine, transmission, band spring and frame under the usual work condition are measured by the vibration test system. The vibration signals are decomposed with the principle of wavelet decomposition at level six, and eigenvectors of signal energy are gained. According to the correlation coefficient of eigenvectors of signal energy distribution, two signals correlativity is determined. It could be an effective method that identificate the main vibration source.

The hydraulic retarder, which is an auxiliary brake device for enhancing traffic safety, has been widely used in kinds of heavy commercial vehicles. When the vehicle equipped with the retarder is traveling in non-braking state, the transmission loss would be caused because of the stirring air between working wheels of the rotor and the stator no matter if the retarder connects in parallel or in series with the transmission [1]. This paper introduces an elaborate hydraulic retarder air-friction reduction system (AFRS) which consists of a vacuum generating module and pneumatic control module. AFRS works to reduce the air friction by decreasing the gas density between working wheels when the retarder is in non-braking state. The pneumatic control model of hydraulic retarder is built first. Then various driving conditions are considered to verify the performance of the AFRS. The stability of the AFRS is analyzed based on the complete driveline model.

Air disc brake (ADB) is the execution unit of automobile brake, which plays a vital role in traffic safety. Lever is a very important driving as well as stress part of ADB. However, seldom periodical or thesis has given specifications about the lever. In this paper, working principle of the lever is illustrated in detail. Finite element analysis (FEA) of the lever is conducted and some structural problems of the lever are found out. Finally, for the condition that the lever doesn't meet the strength requirement, topography optimization is introduced to improve the shape of lever. Simulation results show that the strength of the lever improved obviously with the optimization, and analysis method as well as optimization method in this paper is feasible.

The hydraulic retarder, an important auxiliary brake, has been widely used in heavy vehicles. Under the non-braking working condition, the air resistance torque in the working chamber, which is formed by the rotor of hydraulic retarder's stirring the air, causes pumping loss. This research designs a new type of hydraulic retarder, whose helium is charged into working chamber through closed loop gas system under non-braking working condition, can reduce the parasitic power loss of transmission system. First, under non-braking working condition, the resistance characteristics are analyzed on the base of hydraulic retarder pumping model; then, considering some parameters, such as the volume of chambers and the initial gas pressure, the working chamber gas charge model is established, and the transient gas charge characteristics are also analyzed under non-braking working condition.

In the Plug-in hybrid electric bus, the power train parameter and control strategy significantly affect the economy and dynamic performance. Thus, the simultaneous optimization of power train parameter and control strategy is designed for the trade-off between the dynamic and economic performance. Depending on the parallel electric auxiliary control strategy in a plug-in hybrid electric bus, a vehicle dynamic simulation model is built with the software AVL Cruise. Aiming at the minimization of equivalent gas consumption and acceleration time from 0 to 50kmph, the gear ratio, final drive ratio, gear shifting strategy and control strategy are chosen as optimal variable, which significantly impact power performance and fuel economy. The driving performance and the driving range with full battery are considered as constraints. Based on the software Isight, multi-objective optimization model is built by adopting non-dominated sorting genetic optimization algorithm (NSGA-II).

According to the resonant pavement crusher's work principle, its front frame mounted with the resonance system must meet the needs of the structural requirements. To satisfy the strength and stiffness requirement and avoid the resonance, the natural frequency of the front frame should be designed away from the crusher's working frequency. In this paper, the author builds a finite element model of the front frame and analyses its modal. According to the modal analysis results, the fourth modal frequency is close to the working frequency of the crusher. So the front frame should be optimized. In the finite element model, the front frame has been divided into a number of components of shell elements. Through optimal Latin hypercube experimental design, the author analyses the different component thickness's relationship of the frequencies of the front frame. The components with higher correlation coefficient have been chosen as the variables of optimization.

A key problem of designing a light off-road vehicle with separate frame construction is to improve its torsional characteristic, which has a significant influence on the performance of the vehicle. Inevitably, a certain distortion of the body would be produced by the vibration and impact passing from the road. In present research, an analysis model of light off-road vehicle is established based on the theories and methods of finite element (FEM). The static stiffness of the body is simulated and the deformation of openings on the body, mainly the windows and the doors of the vehicle is studied. On the working conditions of torsion and braking combination, torsion and cornering combination, diagonal dangling, ultimate torsion of unilateral wheels and diagonal wheels, the static strength of separate frame construction is studied as well. The stress concentration regions are obtained according to the results of simulation.

There are a large number of curves and slopes in the mountainous areas. Unreasonable acceleration and deceleration in these areas will increase the burden of the brake system and the fuel consumption of the vehicle. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce a speed planning and promotion system for commercial vehicles in mountainous areas. The wind, slope, curve, engine brake, and rolling resistances are analyzed to establish the thermal model of the brake system. Based on the thermal model, the safe speed of the brake system is acquired. The maximum safe speed on the turning section is generated by the vehicle dynamic model. And the economic speed is calculated according to the fuel consumption model. The planning speed is provided based on these models. This system can guide the driver to handle the vehicle speed more reasonably.

Regenerative braking is an effective technology to extend the driving range of electrified vehicles by recovering kinetic energy from braking. This paper focuses on the design of the regenerative braking control strategy for a commercial vehicle which requires significantly larger braking power than passenger cars. To maximize the energy recovery while ensuring the braking efficiency of the vehicle and its braking safety, this paper proposed a fuzzy logic strategy for regenerative braking control, and a feasibility study was conducted for an electric van. The work includes in three steps. Firstly, state variables that significantly affect regenerative braking performance, i.e., vehicle speed, battery State-of-Charge (SOC), and braking intensity, are identified based on mathematical modelling of the vehicle system dynamics in braking maneuver.

To improve the braking energy recovery rate of pure electric garbage removal vehicles and ensure the braking effect of garbage removal vehicles, a strategy using particle swarm algorithm to optimize the regenerative braking fuzzy control of garbage removal vehicles is proposed. A multi-section front and rear wheel braking force distribution curve is designed considering the braking effect and braking energy recovery. A hierarchical regenerative braking fuzzy control strategy is established based on the braking force and braking intensity required by the vehicle. The first layer is based on the braking force required by the vehicle, based on the front and rear axle braking force distribution plan, and uses fuzzy controllers.