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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.

In order to predict the thermal fatigue life of the internal combustion engine exhaust manifold effectively, it was necessary to accurately obtain the unsteady heat transfer process between hot streams and exhaust manifold all the time. This paper began with the establishment of unsteady coupled heat transfer model by using serial coupling method of CFD and FEA numerical simulations, then the bidirectional thermal coupling analysis between fluid and structure was realized, as a result, the difficulty that the transient thermal boundary conditions were applied to the solid boundary was solved. What's more, the specific coupling mode, the physical quantities delivery method on the coupling interface and the surface mesh match were studied. On this basis, the differences between strong coupling method and portioned treatment for solving steady thermal stress numerical analysis were compared, and a more convenient and rapid method for solving static thermal stress was found.

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.

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.

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 thermal management system is essential for the safe and long-term operation of the power battery. The temperature difference between the individual cells exceeds the acceleration of the battery performance, which leads to battery out of use and affects the performance of the vehicle. Compared with the low heat transfer coefficient of the air-cooling system, the complex structure of the liquid-cooling system and the large quality of phase change material system, the heat pipe has high thermal conductivity, strong isothermal performance and light weight, it’s an efficient cooling element that can be used for thermal management. In this study, the flat plate heat pipe(FPHP) is used to manage the temperature of the battery, through experiments, the optimized placement of the flat heat pipe is obtained.

To prevent braking recession, heavy commercial vehicles are often equipped with fluid auxiliary braking devices, such as hydraulic retarder. Hydraulic retarder can convert the vehicle’s kinetic energy to the fluid heat energy, which can enormously alleviate the main brake’s workload. The traditional hydraulic retarder can provide enough braking torque but has a delay during the braking. In this paper, a new type of magnetorheological fluid (MR fluid) hydraulic retarder is introduced by replacing the traditional fluid with magnetorheological fluid because of its linear braking torque and quick response. By changing the magnetic field intensity, it is easier to control the braking torque than the traditional hydraulic retarder. The rise of magnetorheological fluid temperature during the braking period will reduce the hydraulic retarder’s performance.

The anti-roll bar is an important structural component of the automobile, which can effectively prevent the automobile from rolling and improve the safety of the automobile during steering. In the design of the current anti-roll bar, the stiffness is determined by empirical or oversimplified mathematical models, often not reaching the optimal value. In this paper, eight parameters are used to determine the structure of the anti-roll bar. Combining the Deformation Energy theorem and Castigliano’s theorem, a mathematical model of the stiffness is established. The optimal solution and corresponding parameter values of the mathematical model are obtained by nonlinear programming and genetic algorithm. The influence of structural parameters on the anti-roll bar stiffness is analyzed, and the regular pattern of design is obtained. In addition, the finite element method is used to verify the stiffness solution model.

With the increase of car ownership and the complex and crowded parking environment, it is difficult for drivers to complete the parking operation quickly and accurately, which may cause traffic accidents such as vehicle collisions and road jams because of poor parking skills. The emergence of an automatic parking system can help drivers park safely and reduce the occurrence of safety accidents. In this paper, the neural network identifier on the control method of an adaptive integral derivative of a neural network is proposed for an automatic parallel parking system with front-wheel steering is studied by using MATLAB/Simulink environment, and the simulation is carried out. Firstly, according to vehicle parameters and obstacle avoidance constraints, the minimum parking space, and parking starting position are calculated. Meanwhile, the path planning of parallel parking spaces is carried out by quintic polynomial.

Magnetorheological fluid (MRF) is used as the transmission medium of the hydraulic retarder. The rheological properties are regulated by changing the magnetic field to achieve accurate control of the retarder's braking torque. Under the action of the external magnetic field, the flow structure and performance of the MRF retarder will be changed in a short time. The apparent viscosity coefficient increases by several orders of magnitude, the fluidity deteriorates and the heat generated by the brake cannot be transferred through the liquid circulation, which will affect the braking torque of the retarder. Changing the surface area of the stator also has an influence on the braking torque of the retarder and the wall heat dissipation. In this study, the relationship between the braking torque of the MRF retarder and the stator surface area of the retarder was analyzed.

In order to avoid the braking recession on heavy commercial vehicles caused by the long-distance continuous braking of the main brake, the hydraulic retarder is widely used as an important brake auxiliary device in various heavy commercial vehicles to improve the vehicle safety. However, the hydraulic retarder not only has the advantages of large braking torque and good stability, but also has the disadvantages of poor retarding ability at low rotating speed, braking lag and difficulty in accurately controlling the braking torque. This paper introduces a new type of hydraulic retarder. The new retarder replaces the oil in the retarder with magnetorheological fluid and applies a magnetic field in the retarder arrangement space, so that slows down the vehicle by using the rheological properties of the magnetorheological fluid under the magnetic field.

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.

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.

Hydraulic retarder is one of main auxiliary braking devices of the vehicle. When the vehicle is braking, a great pressure from high-speed fluid is received by hydraulic retarder blades. It is difficult to predict rational hydraulic retarder strength, owing to the complexity of the internal flow of oil. An optimal calculation way of hydraulic retarder strength is proposed based on CFD and FEA, concluding a reasonable result. The 3-D model of hydraulic retarder is built in the general CAD software. The model of fluid passage is extracted, according to the condition when the whole flow passage is filled with oil, and imported to CFD software. The inner flow field of hydraulic retarder is analyzed and the hydraulic surface pressure distribution of the hydraulic retarder blade is obtained at the highest rotary speed of turbine wheel.

While the car ownership increasing all over the world, the unutilized thermal energy in automobile exhaust system is gradually being realized and valued by researchers around the world for better driving energy efficiency. For the unexpected urban traffic, the frequent start and stop processes as well as the acceleration and deceleration lead to the temperature fluctuation of the exhaust gas, which means the unstable hot-end temperature of the thermoelectric module generator (TEG). By arranging the heat conduction oil circulation at the hot end, the hot-end temperature’s fluctuation of the TEG can be effectively reduced, at the expense of larger system size and additional energy supply for the circulation. This research improves the TEG hot-end temperature stability by installing solid heat capacity material(SHCM) to the area between the outer wall of the exhaust pipe and the TEG, which has the merits of simple structure, none energy consumption and light weight.

The closed cabin temperature is anticipated to be cooled down when it is a bit hot inside the driving car. The traditional air-condition lowers the cabin temperature by frequently switching the status of the compressor, which increases the engine’s parasitic power and shortens the compressor’s service-life. The semiconductor auxiliary cooling system with the properties of no moving parts, high control precision and quick response has the potential to assist the on-board air-condition in modulating the cabin temperature with relative small ranges. Little temperature differences between the cabin and the outside environment means that the system energy consumption to ensure the occupant comfort is relatively low and the inefficiency could be made up by the renewable energy source.

In this research, the Mg2Si1-xSnx thermoelectric material is used in the exhaust temperature difference power-generating system, and the material's heat transfer characteristic and power-generating characteristic were analyzed. Firstly, steady heat transfer model from vehicle exhaust to cooling water was established. Then the impact of Sn/Si ratio to the thermoelectric characteristic parameter was analyzed. Finally, considering the influence of varying thermal conductivity to the heat transfer process along the material's heat transfer direction, when the cold end temperature of thermoelectric materials was controlled by cooling water respectively boiling at 343K and 373K, the thermoelectric conversion efficiency and power output of Mg2Si1-xSnx thermoelectric materials with different x value were evaluated based on simulation calculation.

This paper combines fluid software STAR-CCM+ and finite element software ABAQUS to solve the temperature field of this Gasoline engine exhaust manifold based on loose coupling method. Through the simulation of car parking cooling - full load condition at full speed, we estimate thermal fatigue life of the exhaust manifold with the plastic strain increment as the evaluation parameters. It can guide the direction of optimal design of the exhaust manifold. Here we also revealed how the bolt force affects the manifold elastic and plastic behavior.

In order to overcome hysteresis and dead zone problems caused by friction for the proportional solenoid valve, and improve rapidity and stability of the pneumatic system on hydraulic retarder, a closed-loop control strategy based on valve coil current was proposed. The high-frequency low-amplitude dither signal was introduced into the proportional solenoid valve. With the proper dither signal, the stick-slip motion of the valve core was transformed into a steady one, and its dynamic performance was improved. Consequently, response time of retarder was reduced during gear changing. The proportional valve coil current was measured as a feedback for a closed-loop control strategy. Combining with the closed-loop strategy, the PI control algorithm was adopted to make sure that valve current was in accordance with the target value. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signal was used for the driving of proportional solenoid valve.