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Dynamic modelling of the contact between the tires of automobiles and the road surface is crucial for accurate and effective vehicle dynamic simulation and the development of various driving controllers. Furthermore, an accurate prediction of the rolling resistance is needed for powertrain controllers and controllers designed to reduce fuel consumption and engine emissions. Existing models of tires include physics-based analytical models, finite element based models, black box models, and data driven empirical models. The main issue with these approaches is that none of these models offer the balance between accuracy of simulation and computational cost that is required for the model-based development cycle. To address this issue, we present a volumetric approach to model the forces/moments between the tire and the road for vehicle dynamic simulations.

Downhill mountain roads are the accident prone sections because of their complexity and variety. Drivers rely more on driving experience and it is very easy to cause traffic accidents due to the negligence or the judgment failure. Traditional active safety systems, such as ABS, having subjecting to the driver's visual feedback, can’t fully guarantee the downhill driving safety in complex terrain environments. To enhance the safety of vehicles in the downhill, this study combines the characteristics of vehicle dynamics and the geographic information. Thus, through which the drivers could obtain the safety speed specified for his/her vehicle in the given downhill terrains and operate in advance to reduce traffic accidents due to driver's judgment failure and avoid the brake overheating and enhance the safety of vehicles in the downhill.

Vehicle speed is an important factor to driving safety, which is directly related to the stability and braking performance of the vehicle. Besides, the precise measurement of the vehicle speed is the basis of some vehicle active safety systems. Even in the future intelligent transportation, high quality speed information will also play an important role. The commonly used vehicle speed measurement techniques are based on the wheel speed sensors, which are not accurate, especially when the wheels’ slip rate is not equal to zero. Focusing on these issues, image matching technology has been used to measure the vehicle speed in this paper. The image information of the road in the front of the vehicle is collected, and the pixel displacement of the vehicle is calculated by the matching system, thus accurately vehicle speed can be obtained. Compared with conventional speed measure technology, it has the advantages of wide measuring range, and high accuracy.

Accurately predicting the future trajectories of surrounding traffic agents is important for ensuring the safety of autonomous vehicles. To address the scenario of frequent interactions among traffic agents in the highway merging area, this paper proposes a trajectory prediction method based on interactive graph attention mechanism. Our approach integrates an interactive graph model to capture the complex interactions among traffic agents as well as the interactions between these agents and the contextual map of the highway merging area. By leveraging this interactive graph model, we establish an agent-agent interactive graph and an agent-map interactive graph. Moreover, we employ Graph Attention Network (GAT) to extract spatial interactions among trajectories, enhancing our predictions. To capture temporal dependencies within trajectories, we employ a Transformer-based multi-head self-attention mechanism.

This paper proposes a vehicle performance/safety method using combined active steering and differential braking to achieve yaw stability and rollover avoidance. The advantages and disadvantages of active steering and differential braking control methods are identified under a variety of input signals, such as J-turn, sinusoidal, and fishhook inputs by using the implemented linear 4 DOF model. Also, the nonlinear model of the vehicle is evaluated and verified through individual and integrated controller. Each controller gives the correction steering angle and correction moment to the simplified steering and braking actuators. The integrated active steering and differential braking control are shown to be most efficient in achieving yaw stability and rollover avoidance, while active steering and differential braking control has been shown to improve the vehicle performance and safety only in yaw stability and rollover avoidance, respectively.

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 development of intelligent transportation improves road efficiency, reduces automobile energy consumption, and improves driving safety. The core of intelligent transportation is the two-way information interaction between vehicles and the road environment. At present, road environmental information can flow to the vehicle, while the vehicle’s information rarely flows to the outside world. The electronic throttle and electronic braking systems of some vehicles use sensors to get the state of the accelerator and brake pedal, which can be transmitted to the outside environment through technologies such as the Internet of Vehicles. But the Internet of Vehicles technology has not been widely used, and it relies on signal sources, which is a passive way of information acquisition. In this paper, an active identification method is proposed to get the vehicle pedal on-off state as well as the driver’s operation behavior through existing traffic facilities.

Vacuum cleaning vehicle is the necessary equipment for the Municipal Sanitation Department to keep the road surface clean and the dust subsidence system is the heart unit for the proper function of the cleaning vehicle. The reasonable design of this system could increase the load capacity of the vehicle and be convenient for the garbage collecting and dumping. Meanwhile, the engine power could be relatively reduced and the influence on the environment duo to the dusty air in the outlet could be also effectively improved. In the study, the gravity dedusting principle is used firstly for structure design to reduce the flow rate of dust particles inside the lower part of the dust subsidence system. The ruleless collision loss among dust particles is reduced and thereby the fan power is saved. By means of a reasonable separated chamber design and the use of inertia baffle, the sort management for dust particles is developed and the work stress of the export filter is released observably.

The present work is aimed at investigating the tribological factors influencing the LDH test. The material used was AKDQ cold-rolled bare steel, 0.82mm thick. The investigated factors included: test speed (0.833, 4.167, 6.667, and 8.333 mm/s), lubricant viscosity (4.5, 7.0, and 12.5 mm2/s), punch roughness (0.033 and 0.144 μm Ra), and test temperature (25 and 50 °C). Test speed and lubricant viscosity form a variation of the numerator of the Stribeck curve's x-axis (ηV). With ηV increasing from 4 to 120 mm3/s2 friction decreased, resulting in a 0.5 mm higher LDH. Increasing the punch roughness decreased friction producing an increase of 0.25 mm in the LDH. There appears to be an optimum roughness -- at which the roughness features act as lubricant reservoirs but the asperities do not break through the lubricant film -- resulting in minimum friction, therefore, maximum LDH.

Details of the development of metal transfer and friction were studied by drawing cold-rolled bare, galvannealed, electrogalvanized, and hot-dip galvanized strips with a mineral-oil lubricant of 30 cSt viscosity at 40 C, over a total distance of 2500 mm by three methods. An initial high friction peak was associated with metal transfer to the beads and was largest with pure zinc and smallest with Fe-Zn coatings. Insertion of a new strip disturbed the coating and led to the development of secondary peaks. Long-term trends were governed by the stability of the coating. Stearic acid added to mineral oil delayed stabilization of the coating and increased contact area and thus friction with pure zinc surfaces. The usual practice of reporting average friction values can hide valuable information on lubrication mechanisms and metal transfer.

A flow channel design of the battery liquid cooling plate is carried out through the variable density topology optimization method according to the heat dissipation requirements of lithium-ion power batteries under actual working conditions. Firstly, given the non-uniform heat generation of lithium battery cells, the heat generation mechanism is studied so that the battery electro-thermal model is established, then the distribution regularity of heat generation rate in the cell at different discharge rates is obtained. Subsequently, through COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software, the multi-objective topology optimization of the primary configuration radiator is conducted. The weights of the optimization objectives minimum temperature and minimum flow resistance are determined by practical engineering application. Finally, an optimized model with a volume fraction of 50% was obtained.

According to the requirements of high transmission ratio and high load torque of high-speed electric drive axle planetary gear system, the design and analysis of fine-pitch planetary gear system with small modulus, small pressure angle and high full tooth height of are carried out. In order to improve the bearing capacity of gear and reduce gear meshing noise, the tooth profile modification parameters of gear system are optimized. In this paper, the tooth modification methods are analyzed and the gear train parameters are determined. The influence degree of different tooth modification methods on the transmission performance of the gear train is determined by orthogonal experiment method. The transmission error is reduced, the stress fluctuation is improved, and the gear meshing performance is greatly improved by adopting the appropriate modification scheme, which proves the effectiveness of the tooth modification scheme.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are one of the best candidates as energy storage systems for automobile applications due to their high power and energy densities. However, durability in comparison to other battery chemistries continues to be a key factor in prevention of wide scale adoption by the automotive industry. In order to design more-durable, longer-life, batteries, reliable and predictive battery models are required. In this paper, an effective model for simulating full-size LIBs is employed that can predict the operating voltage of the cell and the distribution of variables such as electrochemical current generation and battery state of charge (SOC). This predictive ability is used to examine the effect of parameters such as current collector thickness and tab location for the purpose of reducing non-uniform voltage and current distribution in the cell. It is identified that reducing the non-uniformities can reduce the ageing effects and increase the battery durability.

The vehicle engine exhaust wastes heat. For the conventional scheme, the hot-end of the thermoelectric module is connected with the exhaust pipe, while the cold-end is cooled through the vehicle engine cooling cycle. The variation of vehicle engine operating conditions brings the instability of the hot-end temperature, which affects the power generation performance of thermoelectric materials and increases the damage risk to the thermoelectric materials caused by the high temperature. This research adopts the heat transfer oil circulation as the intermediate fluid to absorb the dynamic heat flux of the vehicle engine exhaust so as to release the heat steadily to the hot-end of the thermoelectric module. The thermal characteristics of the target diesel vehicle engine exhaust gas are evaluated based on the experimental data firstly.

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.

Vehicle exhaust waste-heat recovery with thermoelectric power generators can improve energy efficiency, as well as vehicle fuel economy. In the conventional structure, the hot-end of thermoelectric module is directly connected with the outer wall of the exhaust pipe, while the cold-end is connected with the water pipe’s outer wall of the vehicle engine cooling cycle. However, the variety of vehicle engine operating conditions leads to the instability of the hot-end temperature, which will reduce the generating efficiency of the thermoelectric modules and also shorten its service life. This research is on the basis of constructing a heat transfer oil circulation, and to study the action principles and implementation methods of it.

The performance, life cycle cost, and safety of electric and hybrid electric vehicles (EVs and HEVs) depend strongly on their energy storage system. Advanced batteries such as lithium-ion (Li-ion) polymer batteries are quite viable options for storing energy in EVs and HEVs. In addition, thermal management is essential for achieving the desired performance and life cycle from a particular battery. Therefore, to design a thermal management system, a designer must study the thermal characteristics of batteries. The thermal characteristics that are needed include the surface temperature distribution, heat flux, and the heat generation from batteries under various charge/discharge profiles. Therefore, in the first part of the research, surface temperature distribution from a lithium-ion pouch cell (20Ah capacity) is studied under different discharge rates of 1C, 2C, 3C, and 4C.

Good heat dissipation of Lithium battery can prevent the battery from shortening its life due to rapid aging or thermal runaway. In this paper, an air-cooled structure of 5 series and 3 parallel battery packs is designed, which combines the advantages of series and parallel air ducts and optimizes the heat dissipation effect and the space ratio of air ducts. First, the heat generation model of NCR18650PF lithium battery is established, and the heat generation rate and time under different discharge rates are calculated. Combined with the working conditions of the battery itself, the necessity of battery pack heat dissipation was found.

In electrified vehicle applications, the heat generated of lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells may significantly affect the vehicle range and state of health (SOH) of the pack. Therefore, a major design task is creation of a battery thermal management system with suitable control and cooling strategies. To this end, the thermal behavior of Li-ion cells at various temperatures and operating conditions should be quantified. In this paper, two different commercial pouch cells for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are studied through comprehensive thermal performance tests. This study employs a fractional factorial design of experiments to reduce the number of tests required to characterize the behavior of fresh cells while minimizing the effects of ageing. At each test point, the effects of ambient temperature and charge/discharge rate on several types of cell efficiencies and surface heat generation are evaluated.

A series plug-in hybrid electric powertrain with all-wheel drive is designed using real-world drive cycles as part of the EcoCAR 2 competition. A stock 2013 Chevrolet Malibu Eco is being re-engineered to reduce fuel consumption and emissions while improving consumer acceptability. Waterloo utilizes a 18.9 kWh A123 energy storage system (ESS), which powers two 105 kW TM4 traction motors. A 2.4 L LE9 General Motors coupled to a 105 kW TM4 motor provides range extending performance. Each step of the design process is discussed, including a novel approach to powertrain selection and controls requirement selection that uses real-world drive cycles. The mechanical integration and unique ESS design is also discussed.