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It’s not easy to start the engine in winter, especially in frigid highlands, because the low temperature increases the fuel’s viscosity, decreasing the lubricating oil flow ability and the storage performance of battery. Current electrical heating method can improve the engine starting performance in low temperature condition, but this method adds an external power to the engine, leading to the engine cannot maintain an efficient energy utilization. A warming device using the solar energy is designed to conserve the energy during the daytime, and directly warm up the engine at the time when the engine turns off for a long time, especially during the night. A solar collector installed on the top of the vehicle is used to convert the solar energy to the thermal energy, which is then transferred to the heat accumulator that contain the phase-change medium which can increase the heat storage performance.

The hydraulic retarder, which is an auxiliary brake device for enhancing traffic safety, has been widely used in kinds of heavy commercial vehicles. When the vehicle equipped with the retarder is traveling in non-braking state, the transmission loss would be caused because of the stirring air between working wheels of the rotor and the stator no matter if the retarder connects in parallel or in series with the transmission [1]. This paper introduces an elaborate hydraulic retarder air-friction reduction system (AFRS) which consists of a vacuum generating module and pneumatic control module. AFRS works to reduce the air friction by decreasing the gas density between working wheels when the retarder is in non-braking state. The pneumatic control model of hydraulic retarder is built first. Then various driving conditions are considered to verify the performance of the AFRS. The stability of the AFRS is analyzed based on the complete driveline model.

According to the resonant pavement crusher's work principle, its front frame mounted with the resonance system must meet the needs of the structural requirements. To satisfy the strength and stiffness requirement and avoid the resonance, the natural frequency of the front frame should be designed away from the crusher's working frequency. In this paper, the author builds a finite element model of the front frame and analyses its modal. According to the modal analysis results, the fourth modal frequency is close to the working frequency of the crusher. So the front frame should be optimized. In the finite element model, the front frame has been divided into a number of components of shell elements. Through optimal Latin hypercube experimental design, the author analyses the different component thickness's relationship of the frequencies of the front frame. The components with higher correlation coefficient have been chosen as the variables of optimization.

Head-up Display (HUD) system can avoid drivers’ distraction on dashboard and effectively reduce collisions caused by emergency events, which is gradually being realized by researchers around the world. However, the current HUD only displays information like speed, fuel consumption, other information like acceleration and braking can’t be displayed yet. This research will use the indicator symbol‘s color and position change to remind drivers to brake or accelerate. Drivers can do driving operation timely and accurately. The system has the advantages of safety, intuition and real-time. The vehicle safe speed is calculated according to the road parameters, like adhesion coefficient and slope, and vehicle parameters, such as vehicle mass and centroid. Then, the appropriate braking operations are obtained by combining the vehicle driving state. The braking information is corresponded to the color and position change of the indicator symbol to prompt the drivers by the HUD interface.

There are a large number of curves and slopes in the mountainous areas. Unreasonable acceleration and deceleration in these areas will increase the burden of the brake system and the fuel consumption of the vehicle. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce a speed planning and promotion system for commercial vehicles in mountainous areas. The wind, slope, curve, engine brake, and rolling resistances are analyzed to establish the thermal model of the brake system. Based on the thermal model, the safe speed of the brake system is acquired. The maximum safe speed on the turning section is generated by the vehicle dynamic model. And the economic speed is calculated according to the fuel consumption model. The planning speed is provided based on these models. This system can guide the driver to handle the vehicle speed more reasonably.

Regenerative braking is an effective technology to extend the driving range of electrified vehicles by recovering kinetic energy from braking. This paper focuses on the design of the regenerative braking control strategy for a commercial vehicle which requires significantly larger braking power than passenger cars. To maximize the energy recovery while ensuring the braking efficiency of the vehicle and its braking safety, this paper proposed a fuzzy logic strategy for regenerative braking control, and a feasibility study was conducted for an electric van. The work includes in three steps. Firstly, state variables that significantly affect regenerative braking performance, i.e., vehicle speed, battery State-of-Charge (SOC), and braking intensity, are identified based on mathematical modelling of the vehicle system dynamics in braking maneuver.

With the rapid development of the logistics and transportation industry, heavy-duty trucks play an increasingly important role in social life. However, due to the characteristics of large cargo loads, high center of mass and relatively narrow wheelbase, the driving stability of heavy trucks are poor, and it is easy to cause rollover accidents under high-speed driving conditions, large angle steering and emergency obstacle avoidance. To improve the roll stability of heavy trucks, it is necessary to design an active anti-rollover control system, through the analysis of the yaw rate and the load transfer rate of the vehicle, driving states can be estimated during the driving process. Under the intervention of the control system, the lateral transfer rate of heavy trucks can be reduced to correct the driving posture of the vehicle body and reduce the possibility of rollover accidents.

The continuous braking for the brake drum will cause the brake thermal decay when the heavy truck is driving down the long slope in the mountain areas. It reduces the heavy truck’s braking performance and the braking safety. The engine braking and the hydraulic retarder braking both consume the kinetic energy of the heavy truck and can assist the truck driving in the mountain areas. This research proposes a combined hill descent braking strategy for heavy truck based on the recorded information of the slopes to ensure the braking safety of the heavy truck. The vehicle dynamic model and the brake drum temperature rising model are established to analyze the drum’s temperature variation during the downhill progress of the heavy truck. Then based on the slope information, the combined braking temperature variation is analyzed considering the characteristics of the engine braking, the drum braking and the hydraulic retarder braking.

To make full use of engine exhaust heat and further improve the utilization of the energy efficiency of the heavy truck, thermoelectric module is used to contribute to thermoelectric power generation. The hot-end temperature of the module varies with the engine operating condition because it is connected with the exhaust pipe. The cold-end of the thermoelectric module is mainly cooled by engine cooling system. Increasing the temperature difference between the hot-end and cold-end of the thermoelectric module is a good way to improve the thermoelectric conversion efficiency. For the poor controllability of the hot-end temperature of the thermoelectric module, this study puts forward by lowering the cold-end temperature of the thermoelectric module so as to ensure the improvement of the thermoelectric conversion efficiency. The cooling circle for the cold-end of the thermoelectric module which is independent of the engine cooling system is built.

Mountainous area makes up more than half of the whole land area of China, the road of which is full of ups and downs. Heavy commercial vehicles as the main means of transport in mountainous areas, braking torque recession, even brake failure, often happens because of the overheating in long downhill journey, which seriously threatens the safety of the driving. Therefore, this paper presents an intelligent assistance system based on Geographic Information System and vehicle dynamics. The main brake duration and heat generation can be effectively reduced through adjusting the speed at the slope top, applying the engine auxiliary brake in the initial stage and choosing braking strategy appropriately, in order to prolong the downhill driving distance and improve the safety during continuous braking. This paper characterizes and analyses the road gradients and their effects on braking heat generation.