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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.

The noise and vibration of electric vacuum pump (EVP) become a major problem for electric vehicles when the vehicle is stationary. This paper aims at the EVP’s abnormal noise of an electric vehicle when stationary. Driver’s right ear (DRE) noise was tested and spectrogram analysis was carried out to identify the noise sources. In order to attenuate this kind of abnormal noise, a new EVP rubber mount with a segmented structure was introduced, which optimized the transfer path of vibration. Then dynamic stiffness and fatigue life of the EVP mount with different rubber hardness were calculated through finite element analysis (FEA) approach. Bench tests of fatigue life and DRE noise were performed to validate the FEA results. Test data of the sample mount shows that sound pressure level of DRE was dramatically attenuated and thus passengers’ ride comfort was enhanced.

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.

With the rapidly developing automotive industry and stricter environmental protection laws and regulations, lightweight materials, advanced manufacturing processes and structural optimization methods are widely used in body design. Therefore, in order to evaluate and improve the pedestrian protection during a collision, this paper presents an impact simulation modeling and structural optimization method for a sport utility vehicle engine hood made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). Head injury criterion (HIC) was used to evaluate the performance of the hood in this regard. The inner panel and the outer panel of CFRP hood were discretized by shell elements in LS_DYNA. The Mat54-55 card was used to define the mechanical properties of the CFRP hood. In order to reduce the computational costs, just the parts contacted with the hood were modeled. The simulations were done in the prescribed 30 impact points.

Gradient based topology optimization method is difficult used to optimization of crashworthiness structures due to the expensive computational cost of sensitivity analysis and complex nonlinear behaviors (geometric nonlinearity, material nonlinearity and contact nonlinearity) of structures during a collision. Equivalent static loads (ESLs) method is one of the methods for nonlinear dynamic response optimization. However, this method ignores the material nonlinearity. Thus this paper proposes an improved topology optimization method for crashworthiness structure based on a modified ESLs method. A new calculation of ESLs considering material nonlinearity is proposed. The improved ESLs method is employed to transform the nonlinear dynamic response optimization into a nonlinear static response optimization with multiple load cases. Each element in the design domain is assigned with a design variable.

In this study, the vibroacoustic characteristics and torque fluctuation of switched reluctance motors (SRMs) with different phases and poles have been analyzed in detail. Also, the common four SRMs, i.e., three-phase 6/4 SRM, four-phase 8/6 SRM, five-phase 10/8 SRM, and six-phase 12/10 SRM, have been selected. First, the spatial-temporal distribution characteristics of radial force in SRMs were revealed by virtue of the analytical derivation, which was validated by the 2D Fourier decomposition based on the finite-element results of radial force. Second, a multiphysics model, which was composed of an electromagnetic field, a mechanical field, and an acoustic field, was established to predict the noise behaviors of SRMs with different phases and poles. Third, the relationship between the torque fluctuation and the phases / poles of SRMs, and the relationship between the noise and the radial force / phases / poles are all analyzed.

Thin-walled structures have been widely used in automobile body design because of its good lightweight and superior mechanical properties. For the energy-absorbing box of the automobile, it is necessary to consider its working conditions under the axial and oblique impact. In this paper, a novel hierarchical honeycomb is proposed and used as filler for thin-walled structures. Meanwhile, the crashworthiness performances of the conventional honeycomb-filled and the hierarchical honeycomb-filled thin-walled structures under different impact conditions are systematically studied. The results indicate the energy absorption of the hierarchical honeycomb-filled thin-walled structure is higher than that of the conventional honeycomb-filled thin-walled structure, and the impact angle has significant effects on the energy absorption performance of the hierarchical honeycomb-filled structure.

Sealing system is an important subsystem of modern high-performance engine. Sealing system reliability directly affects the engine operating conditions. Cylinder head gaskets(CHG) sealing system is of the most importance to the engine sealing system, which is not only responsible for sealing chamber, the cooling fluid and lubricating oil passage, for preventing gas leakage, water leakage and oil leakage, but also responsible for force transferring between cylinder head and cylinder body. Basing on nonlinear solution method, the sealing performance of multi-layer-steel cylinder head gaskets to a gasoline engine is studied with the finite element software ABAQUS. The deformations of the cylinder liners and engine block are also considered.

This paper aimed at a gasoline engine "cylinder head- cylinder gasket-cylinder body-bolt" sealing system, built the 3D solid model and the finite element model of the assembly, and calculated the stress and strain of the cylinder gasket under the cylinder pressure and the deformation of the engine block. In addition, based on the calculation results, this paper put forward the optimization scheme of the cylinder gasket structure, re-established the simulation model, and get the calculation results. The calculation results showed that the cylinder pressure had influence on the sealing performance of the cylinder gasket, and the influence of cylinder pressure should be taken into consideration when designing the cylinder gasket. When the cylinder pressure was applied, the overall contact stress of the cylinder gasket had decreased, and the whole remaining height of the gasket had increased.

Based on equivalent static loads method (ESL), a nonlinear dynamic topology optimization is carried out to optimize an automotive body in white (BIW) subjected to representative legislative crash loads, including frontal impact, side barrier impact, roof crush and rear impact. To meet the crashworthiness performances, two evaluation indexes are defined to convert the practical engineering problems into mathematic optimization problems. The strain energy is treated as the stiffness evaluation index of the BIW and the relative displacement is employed as the compliance index of the components and parts.

The flow issues of the turbocharged intake system for a diesel engine are mainly introduced in this work and the effects of a multi-chamber perforated resonator which can efficiently attenuate broadband noise and has compact structure on the flow performances of the intake system is analyzed by contrast. Based on the acoustic grid resulting from pre-processing of 3D models for finite element analysis, a computational fluid dynamics flow simulation comparative analysis between the intake systems with and without a resonator including pressure and velocity distribution is conducted with the software Star-CCM+. The simulation results indicate that the air pressure drop of the intake system with a resonator is slightly higher than that of the intake system without a resonator but it is still relatively low compared with that of the entire intake system.

Off-road trucks, tractors and earth-moving machines are at high risk of accidents involving falling objects or rollovers. Therefore, these machines need proper protective structures to protect operators. This study investigates the crashworthiness optimization of a hydraulic excavator cab roof rail based on an improved bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) method considering two different load cases (a lateral quasi-static load and an impact load from the top of cab, respectively). In the crashworthiness optimization problem, a weighted summation of external works done by the two different load cases is treated as the objective function while the volume of design domain is treated as the constraint. A mutative weight scheme is proposed to stabilize the optimization and balance the two load cases. Finite element (FE) model is established and two prototypes are fabricated based on the optimal design.

Nowadays, the design and development of the sliding door has been gained great attention for its easy egress and ingress. However, most studies on the kinematic and dynamic characteristics of sliding doors were based on the commercial code ADAMS, while the accuracy of flexibility in modal synthesis method and the ability of complex contact condition may not be guaranteed. Thus, a new dynamic analysis method by using the commercial code LS-Dyna was proposed in this paper to take into account the complex deformation and boundary conditions based on the finite element model. The impact force obtained from the Ls-dyna was compared with that from ADAMS when their monitoring points speed and closing time maintained the same during the sliding process. The impact force between the rollers and the guides was employed as evaluation criterion for different methods because of its effect on the roller wear and the moving smoothness in the sliding process.

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.

The mechanical claw is an important functional part of intelligent sanitation vehicles. Its performance significantly influences the functional reliability and structural safety of intelligent sanitation vehicles. The load of the trash changes extensively during the work of the mechanical claw. Hence, a comprehensive consideration of structural uncertainty during designing is needed to meet performance requirements. Uncertainty optimization design should be applied to reduce the sensitivity of structural performance to uncertain factors and ensure the robust performance of the mechanical paw structure. In this study, a numerical model of the mechanical claw of novel intelligent sanitation vehicles is established first in SolidWorks, and a finite element model is built by Optistruct. Based on the analysis of uncertain load factors of the mechanical claw, a robust mathematical model of uncertain factors is established by the Gauss-Chebyshev and Smolyak algorithm.

The mechanism of automobile brake hot spots is unclear, which is a problem in the brake industry. Complex coupling between friction, heat, contact, and structure is the main difficulty in revealing the mechanism of brake hot spots. This paper proposes a new way to study the mechanism of hot spots by analyzing the deformation behavior of brake discs under asymmetric mechanical loading. The actual brake is simplified into a brake disc and friction lining system, and a transient dynamic finite element model under asymmetric mechanical loads is established to analyze the deformation characteristics of the brake disc. The normal deformation of the brake disc under asymmetric mechanical loads consists of two parts: low-frequency bending deformation and high-frequency waviness deformation, which are caused by the squeezing effect of the asymmetric brake pressure on the brake disc and the constraint modal vibration of the brake disc.

Calculating accurately iron bridge saturation effects of the magnetic field, for Permanent Magnet Assisted Synchronous Reluctance Motors (PMASynRMs), remains to be a knotty problem. This paper presents an analytical modeling method to predict open-circuit magnetic field distributions and electromagnetic performances of PMASynRMs, considering iron bridge saturation effects. This analytical modeling method combines the magnetic equivalent circuit method, superposition principle, the solution of the governing Maxwell’s field equations and a complex relative permeance function. A quadruple-layer PMASynRM are remodeled into four surface-inserted permanent magnet synchronous motors (SPMSMs) which have different surface-inserted permanent magnets.

The separation and analysis of the torque of the permanent magnet synchronous motor is of great significance for optimizing the torque output of the motor. Based on the frozen permeability method, the virtual work principle (VWP) or the Maxwell stress tensor method (MSTM) is often used to separate the torque for torque analysis. However, considering the influence of non-ideal factors such as motor saturation, cross-coupling and flux harmonics, there are differences in torque separation between the VWP and the MSTM, which has been researched and analyzed in this paper. Based on this, for the assisted airspace barrier design of a surface-inserted permanent magnet synchronous motor, to conduct theoretical research on the torque optimization design, this paper uses the VWP to separate the average torque and the MSTM to separate the torque ripple.

An accurate finite element (FE) model is the basis for the numerical prediction of vibration and noise of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs). This paper provides an equivalent modeling method of PMSMs considering the orthotropic material parameters of the stator system. First, a theoretical analysis of the influence of orthotropic material parameters on modal characteristics is implemented. Subsequently, the influence of orthotropic material parameters on the modal frequency of the stator is analyzed through the FE method. Then, the modal parameters of the stator core and the stator assembly are obtained by modal tests. According to the equivalent FE model and modal parameters, the orthotropic material parameters of the stator system are acquired. Moreover, to save the calculation time and simplify the modal identification process, the influence of windings is taken into account through additional mass and additional stiffness during the modeling process.

As the international community strengthens the control of carbon dioxide emissions, electric vehicles have gradually become a substitute for internal combustion engine vehicles. The battery pack is one of the most important components of electric vehicles. The strength and fatigue performance of the battery support plate not only affect the performance of the vehicle but also concern the safety of the driver. In the present study, the finite element model of a battery pack for fatigue analysis is completely established. The random vibration stress response analysis and acceleration power spectral density response analysis of the support plate for the battery pack are carried out, and the accuracy of the finite element model is verified by a random vibration test.