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For fracture cracks that occurred in the tight coupling exhaust manifold durability test of a four-cylinder gasoline engine with EGR channel, causes and solutions for fracture failure were found with the help of CFD and FEA numerical simulations. Wall temperature and heat transfer coefficient of the exhaust manifold inside wall were first accurately obtained through the thermal-fluid coupling analysis, then thermal modal and thermoplastic analysis were acquired by using the finite element method, on account of the bolt pretightening force and the contact relationship between flange face and cylinder head. Results showed that the first-order natural frequency did not meet the design requirements, which was the main reason of fatigue fracture. However, when the first-order natural frequency was rising, the delta equivalent plastic strain was increasing quickly as well.

The performance of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) that recovers heat from the exhaust of a heavy-duty diesel engine was simulated. The work was an extension of a prior study that simulated the performance of an experimental ORC system developed and tested at Oak Ridge National laboratory (ORNL). The experimental data were used to set model parameters and validate the results of that simulation. For the current study the model was adapted to consider a 15 liter turbocharged engine versus the original 1.9 liter light-duty automotive turbodiesel studied by ORNL. Exhaust flow rate and temperature data for the heavy-duty engine were obtained from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) for a range of steady-state engine speeds and loads without EGR. Because of the considerably higher exhaust gas flow rates of the heavy-duty engine, relative to the engine tested by ORNL, a different heat exchanger type was considered in order to keep exhaust pressure drop within practical bounds.

Recreational vehicles have a lot of potential consumers in China, especially the type C recreational vehicle is popular among consumers due to its advantages, prompting an increase in the production and sales volumes. The type C vehicle usually has a higher air drag than the common commercial vehicles due to its unique appearance. It can be reduced by optimizing the structural parameters, thus the energy consumed by the vehicle can be decreased. The external flow field of a recreational vehicle is analyzed by establishing its computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model. The characteristic of the RV’s external flow field is identified based on the simulation result. The approximation models of the vehicle roof parameters and air drag and vehicle volume are established by the response surface method (RSM). The vehicle roof parameters are optimized by multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MO-PSO).

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.

Correct shifting schedule of vehicle coasting mode play a vital role in improving vehicle comfort and economy. At present, the calibration of the transmission shifting schedule ignores the impact of vehicle’s dynamic mass. This paper proposes a method for optimizing the shifting schedule of the coasting modes with gear based on the dynamic mass identification of the vehicle. This method identifies the dynamic mass of the vehicle during driving and substitute them into the process of solving the shifting schedule parameters. Then we get the optimal shifting schedule. At first, establish the Extended Kalman Filter to Pre-process the experimental data, reducing errors caused by excessive data fluctuations. Then, establishing a weighted squares estimation model based on particle swarm optimization to identify the dynamic mass of the vehicle.

In winter, the temperature of the coldest month is below -20°C. Low temperature makes it difficult to start a diesel engine, combust sufficiently, which increases fuel consumption and pollutes the environment. The use of an electric power-driven auxiliary heating system increases the battery load and power consumption. Solar thermal energy has the advantages of easy access, clean and pollution-free. The coolant in the cylinder block of the diesel engine has a large contact area within the cylinder and is evenly distributed, which can be used as a heat transfer medium for the warm-up. A one-dimensional heat transfer model of the diesel engine block for the coolant warm-up is developed, and the total heat required for the warm-up is calculated by an iterative method in combination with the warm-up target.

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 the field of active safety, the active four-wheel-steering (4WS) system seems to be an attractive alternative and an effective tool to improve the vehicles' handling stability in lane-keeping control performance. Under normal using condition, the vehicle's lateral acceleration is comparatively small, and the mathematic relationship between the small side force excitation and the small slip angle of the tire is in the linear region. Furthermore, the effects of roll, heave, and pitch motions are neglected as well as the dynamic characteristics of the tires and suspension system in this work. Therefore, the linear quadratic control (LQC) theory is used to ensure that the output of the 4WS control system can keep track of the desired yaw rate and zero-sideslip-angle response can also be realized at the same time.

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.

At present, many electric vehicles are often equipped with only a single-stage final drive. Although the single-stage speed ratio can meet the general driving requirements of electric vehicles, if the requirements of the maximum speed and the requirements for starting acceleration or climbing are met at the same time, the power demand of the drive motor is relatively large, and the efficient area of the drive motor may be far away from the operating area corresponding to daily driving. If the two-speed automatic transmission is adopted, the vehicle can meet the requirements of maximum speed, starting acceleration and climbing at the same time, reduce the power demand of the driving motor, and improve the economy under certain power performance. This is especially important for medium and large vehicles.

Discretionary lane changing is commonly seen in highway driving. Intelligent vehicles are expected to change lanes discretionarily for better driving experience and higher traffic efficiency. This study proposed to optimize the decision-making and trajectory-planning process so that intelligent vehicles made lane changes not only with driving safety taken into account, but also with the goal to improve driving comfort as well as to meet the driver’ s expectation. The mechanism of how various factors contribute to the driver’s intention to change lanes was studied by carrying out a series of driving simulation experiments, and a Lane-Changing Intention Generation (LCIG) model based on Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) was proposed.

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.

Driving comfort is one of the most important indexes for automobile comfort. Driving posture comfort is closely related to the drivers' joint angles and joint torques. In present research, a new method is proposed to identify the most comfortable driving posture based on studying the relation between drivers' joint angles and joint torques. In order to truly reflect a driving situation, the accurate human driving model of 50 percent of the size of Chinese male is established according to the human body database of RAMSIS firstly. Biomechanical model based on accurate human driving model is also developed to analyze and obtain dynamic equations of human driving model by employing Kane method. The joint torque-angle curves of drivers' upper and lower limbs during holding wheel or pedal operation can be obtained through dynamic simulation in the MATLAB. Through curve-fitting analysis, the minimum joint torque of a driver' limb and the optimal joint angel can be found.

This paper presents a method of calculating temperature field of the piston by using a wavelet neural network (WNN) to identify the unknown boundary conditions. Because of the complexity of the heat transfer and limitations of experimental conditions of heat transfer analysis of the piston in a diesel engine, boundary conditions of the piston temperature field were usually obtained empirically, and thus the result itself was uncertain. By employing the capability of resolution analysis from a wavelet neural network, the method obtains improved boundary heat transfer coefficients with a limited number of measured temperatures. Using FEA software iteratively, results show the proposed wavelet neural network analysis method improves the prediction of unknown boundary conditions and temperature distribution consistent with the experimental data with an acceptable error.

Braking energy recovery is an important method for Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) to save energy and increase driving range. The vehicle braking system performs regenerative braking control based on driver operations. Different braking operations have a significant impact on energy recovery efficiency. This paper proposes a method for planning the braking process of a BEV based on the Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative System (IVICS). By actively planning the braking process, the braking energy recovery efficiency is improved. Vehicles need to decelerate and brake before entering a curve. The IVICS is used to obtain information about the curve section ahead of the vehicle's driving route. Then calculating the reference speed of the curve, and obtaining the vehicle's braking target in advance, so as to actively plan the vehicle braking process.

In order to acquire low fuel consumption while the engine is running at low speeds and maintain the high power output of the traditional 4-valve engine at high speeds, multiple camshafts were applied in gasoline engines. An engine cycle simulation process of a gasoline engine with multiple camshaft profiles was presented in this paper. Engine cycle models were set up to describe external characteristic at 14 different speeds. A one-dimension model was used to describe the transient heat and mass transfer in pipes of the gasoline engine. In-cylinder combustion model was calibrated by engine test results. The simulation results showed a good agreement with engine testing results. Simulation and experimental research showed the volumetric efficiency and torque were low from 2500rpm to 3500rpm. Some parametrical study was presented for performance improvement of intermediate speeds, including changing induction-pipe length and putting off multiple camshafts shift.

Coolant flow and its heat transfer directly affect the cooling efficiency, thermal load of heated components as well as thermal efficiency of diesel engine. An efficient approach to study cooling system for diesel engine is 3D CFD calculation for coolant jacket and 1D cooling system simulation. The velocity, pressure and heat transfer coefficients (HTC) distribution in the coolant jacket of a 4 cylinder diesel engine are computed by 3D CFD approach using AVL/FIRE software. The improved schemes can be put forward according to calculating results. The boundary condition of 1D cooling system for diesel engine can be obtained by averaging computed inlet and outlet total pressure drop and heat transfer coefficients from CFD calculation. The parameters of the engine, which are fitted with the vehicle such as capacity of radiator, fan and water pump, could be decided.

A 3-D numerical analysis model of transient heat transfer among the multi-component coupling system in combustion chamber of internal combustion engine has been developed successfully in the paper. The model includes almost all solid components in combustion chamber, such as piston assembly, cylinder liner, cylinder head gasket, cylinder head, intake valves and exhaust valves, etc. With two different coupling heat transfer modes, one is the lubricant film heat conduction between two moving components, another is the contact heat conduction between two immovable solid components, and with the direct coupled-field analysis method of FEM, the heat transfer relation among the components is established. The simulation result dedicates the transient heat transfer process among the components such as moving piston assembly and cylinder liner, moving valves and cylinder head. The effect of cylinder head gasket on heat transfer among the components is also studied.

Operating level of a metal-belt CVT mainly rest with the ECU. Conventional control strategies which were obtained from tests or PID controller can not correspond to the driver’s intention or provide various driving environments. It is considered that control targets of metal-belt CVT could be distinguished by a speed ratio, line pressure and starting element till now. Running performance of automobile with a CVT mainly depends on the speed ratio control. An adapted fuzzy logic ratio control algorithm is suggested and optimized. A throttle position and its changing rate will be inputs of the FLC to meet the driver’s intention and make the intelligent control come true. A fuzzy logic line pressure control algorithm is also suggested and optimized corresponding to the complicated high line pressure control.