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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.

During the launch of a car, severe torsional vibration sometimes may occur in its driveline due to somewhat the slipping of the clutch, its intuitive sense for an occupant is the longitudinal vibration of the vehicle, referred to as the launch shudder whose characteristic frequency is from 5 to 25 Hz generally. As the main vibration sources of the driveline and its crucial nonlinear components, the variable stiffness and backlash of the gear meshing are considered, their impacts on the launch shudder are analyzed in this paper. Conformal mapping, finite element method and regression method etc. are the main approaches to calculate the variable meshing stiffness of a gear pair. If this stiffness is get, it can usually be substituted for its approximate analytical expression, just with finite harmonic terms, in Fourier Series form into Ordinary Differential Equations(ODEs) to calculate the vehicle responses with its nonlinearity considered.

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) uses hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, the whole energy conversion process almost has no negative impact on the environment. The PEM fuel cell stack with the advantages of low-operating temperature, high current density and fast start-up ability is considered to be the next generation of new electric vehicle power. However, due to the limited current output, it is difficult for a single cell to meet the practical application requirements. The actual fuel cell stack is formed by many single cells assembled together. The assembly process is often related to load transfer, material transfer, energy exchange, multi-phase flow, electrochemical reaction and other factors. The performance of MEA (Membrane Electrode Assembly), sealing gaskets and other components will change during the assembly process, which makes the fuel cell stack assembly process more complex.

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.

The work-hardening response of TRIP780 steel subjected to strain-path changes was investigated using two-stage tension experiments. Large specimens were prestrained and then sub-sized samples were subjected to tension along various directions. The influence of strain-path changes on flow stress and work hardening performance was discussed in detail. The specific plastic work was calculated to compare the kinematic hardening behaviour after strain-path changes. The results showed that transient hardening was observed for TRIP780 sheets subjected to orthogonal strain-path change. The strain-hardening exponent (n-value) was influenced by prestraining levels and the strain path. The n-value exhibited a greater decrease under an orthogonal strain-path change. Prestraining can delay the onset of high work hardenability of TRIP steels. It is meaningful for the safety design of vehicles.

Turbochargers improve performance in internal combustion engines. Due to low production costs, TC assemblies are supported on floating ring bearings. In current lubrication analysis of floating ring bearing, inner and outer oil film are usually supposed to be adiabatic. The heat generated by frictional power is carried out by the lubricant flow. In reality, under real operating conditions, there existed heat transfer between the inner and outer film. In this paper, the lubrication performance of floating ring bearing when considering heat transfer between inner film and outer film is studied. The lubrication model of the floating ring is established and the heat transferred through the ring between the inner and outer film is calculated. The calculation results show that heat flow between the inner and outer film under different outer film eccentricity ratio and rotate ratio has a large difference.

Environmental perception is a crucial subsystem in autonomous vehicles. In order to build safe and efficient traffic transportation, several researches have been proposed to build accurate, robust and real-time perception systems. Camera and LiDAR are widely equipped on autonomous self-driving cars and developed with many algorithms in recent years. The fusion system of camera and LiDAR provides state-of the-art methods for environmental perception due to the defects of single vehicular sensor. Extrinsic parameter calibration is able to align the coordinate systems of sensors and has been drawing enormous attention. However, differ from spatial alignment of two sensors’ data, joint calibration of multi-sensors (more than two sensors) should balance the degree of alignment between each two sensors.

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.

The vibration characteristics of hybrid vehicles are very different from that of traditional fuel vehicles. In this paper, the active and passive control schemes are used to inhibit the vibration issues in vehicle hybrid powertrain system. Firstly the torsional vibration mechanical model including engine, motor and planetary gear subsystems is established. Then the transient vibration responses of typical working condition are analyzed through power control strategy. Consequently the active and passive control of torsional vibration in hybrid powertrain system is proposed. The active control of the motor and generator torque is designed and the vehicle longitudinal vibration is reduced. The vibration of the planetary gear system is ameliorated with passive control method by adding torsional vibration absorbers to power units. The vibration characteristics in vehicle hybrid powertrain system are effectively improved through the active and passive control.

Millions of configurations of power-split hybrid powertrain can be generated due to variation in number of planetary-gear sets (PG), difference in number, type and installation location of shift actuators (clutches or brakes), and difference in connection positions of power components. Considering the large number of configurations, complex structures and control modes, it is vital to construct an appropriate multi-index system evaluation method, which directly affects the requirement fulfillment, the time and cost of 2-PG system configuration design. Considering one-sidedness (dynamics and economic performance), simplicity (linear combination of indicators) and subjectivity (relying on expert experience) of previous system evaluation method of 2-PG system design, a more systematic evaluation method is proposed in this paper. The proposed evaluation system consists of five aspects, involving dynamic, economy, comfort, reliability and cost, and more than 20 indexes.

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.

With the increasing worldwide concern on environmental pollution, battery electrical vehicles (BEV) have attracted a lot attention. However, it still couldn’t satisfy the market requirements because of the low battery power density, high cost and long charging time. The range-extended electrical vehicle (REEV) got more attention because it could avoid the mileage anxiety of the BEVs with lower cost and potentially higher efficiency. When internal combustion engine (ICE) works as the power source of range extender (RE) for REEV, its NVH, emissions in starting process need to be optimized. In this paper, a 2-cylinder PFI gasoline engine and a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) are coaxially connected. Meanwhile, batteries and load systems were equipped. The RE co-control system was developed based on Compact RIO (Compact Reconfigurable IO), Labview and motor control unit (MCU).

This paper presents a theoretical study of a finite hybrid piezoelectric phononic crystal (PC) beam with shunting circuits. The vibration transmissibility method (TM) is developed for the finite system. The uniform and non-uniform configurations of the resonators, piezoelectric patches and shunting circuits are respectively considered. The properties of the vibration attenuation of the hybrid PC beam undergoing bending vibration are investigated and quantified. It is shown that the proper relaxation of the periodicity of the PC is conducive to forming a broad vibration attenuation region. The hybrid piezoelectric PC combines the purely mechanical PC with the piezoelectric PC and provides more tunable mechanisms for the target band-gap. Taking the structural and circuit parameters into account, the design of experiments (DOE) method and the multi-objective genetic optimization method are employed to improve the vibration attenuation and meet the lightweight demand of the attachments.

Hot forming process of ultrahigh strength boron steel 22MnB5 is widely applied in vehicle industry. It is one of the most effective approaches for vehicle light weighting. Dynamic recovery is the major softening mechanism of the boron steel under austenite state at elevated temperatures. Deformation mechanism of the boron steel can be revealed by investigation on the behavior of dynamic recovery, which could also improve the accuracy of forming simulations for hot stamping. Uniaxial tensile experiments of the boron steel are carried out on the thermo-mechanical simulator Gleeble3800 at elevated temperatures. The true stress-strain curves and the relations between the work hardening rate and flow stress are obtained in different deformation conditions. The work hardening rate decreases linearly with increasing the flow stress.

There are a large number of uncertainties in engineering design, and the accumulated uncertainties will enlarge the overall failure probability of the structure system. Therefore, structural design considering uncertainties has good guiding significance for improving the reliability of engineering structures. To address this issue, the dynamic-static structural topology optimization is established and reliability-based topology optimization with decoupling format is conducted in this study. The design point which satisfying the constraint of the target reliability indicator is obtained according to the reliability indicators of the first-order reliability method, and the uncertain design variables are modified into a deterministic variable according to the sensitivity information.

In order to explore approaches for improving object detection accuracy in intelligent vehicle system, we exploit super-resolution techniques. A novel method is proposed to confirm the conjecture whether some popular super-resolution networks used for environmental perception of intelligent vehicles and robots can indeed improve the detection accuracy. COCO dataset which contains images from complex ordinary environment is utilized for the verification experiment, due to it can adequately verify the generalization of each algorithm and the consistency of experimental results. Using two representative object detection networks to produce the detection results, namely Faster R-CNN and YOLOv3, we devise to reduce the impact of resizing operation. The two networks allow us to compare the performance of object detection between using original and super-resolved images. We quantify the effect of each super-resolution techniques as well.

The multi-body dynamics simulation and physical iteration were carried out based on the 4-channel road simulation bench, the solution of fatigue test bench which was suitable for cab with frame and suspension was designed. Large load and displacement above the suspension can be loaded on the test bench, and the same weak position of cab exposed on the road test can be assessed well on the fatigue test bench. The effectiveness of the bench test solution was verified though comparative study. And it has important reference for the same type of cab assembly with suspension in the fatigue bench test. According to the durability specifications of cab assembly, a multi-body dynamics model with a satisfactory accuracy was built. And the fixture check and virtual iteration analysis were used to verify the effectiveness of the solution. According to the road load signal analysis and multi-body dynamics analysis results, the test bench with linear guide and spherical joint was built.

Beamforming techniques are widely used today in aeroacoustic wind tunnels to identify wind noise sources generated by interaction between incoming flow and the test object. In this study, a planar spiral microphone array with 120 channels was set out-of-flow at 1:1 aeroacoustic wind tunnel of Shanghai Automotive Wind Tunnel Center (SAWTC) to test exterior wind noise sources of a production car. Simultaneously, 2 reference microphones were set in vehicle interior to record potential sound source signal near the left side view mirror triangle and the signal of driver’s ear position synchronously. In addition, a spherical array with 48 channels was set inside the vehicle to identify interior noise sources synchronously as well. With different correlation methods and an advanced algorithm CLEAN-SC, the ranking of contributions of vehicle exterior wind noise sources to interested interior noise locations was accomplished.

Based on the emergency lane change cases extracted from the China naturalistic driving data, the driving steering behavior divides into three phases: collision avoidance, lateral movement and steering stabilization. Using the steering primitive fitting by Gaussian function, the distribution of the duration time, the relationship between steering wheel rate and deflection were analyzed in three phases. It is shown that the steering behavior essentially is composed of steering primitives during the emergency lane-change. However, the combination of the steering primitives is different according to the specific steering constraints in three phases. In the collision avoidance phase, a single steering primitive with high peak is used for the fast steering; in the lateral movement and stabilization phase, a combination of two or even more steering primitives is built to a more accurate steering.