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In this paper, a new solution method is presented to study the effect of wave propagation in engine manifolds, which includes solving one-dimensional models for compressible flow of air. Velocity, pressure, and density profiles are found by solving a system of non-linear Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) in space and time derived from Euler’s equations. The 1D model includes frictional losses, area change, and heat transfer. The solution is traditionally found by utilizing the Method of Characteristics and applying finite difference solutions to the resulting system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) over a discretized grid. In this work, orthogonal collocation is used to solve the system of ODEs that is defined along the characteristic curves. Orthogonal polynomials are utilized to approximate velocity, pressure, sound speed, and the characteristic curves along which the system of PDEs reduce to a system of ODEs.

Research of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) is an important issue of intelligent vehicle (IV). As we all known, a real and experienced driver can control vehicle's speed very well under every traffic environment of ACC working. So a direct and feasible way for establishing ACC controller is to build a human-like longitudinal control algorithm with the simulation of driver behavior of speed control. In this paper, a novel fuzzy self-tuning control algorithm of ACC is established and this controller's parameters can be tuned on-line based on the evaluation indexes that can describe how the driver consider the quality of dynamical characteristic of vehicle longitudinal dynamics. With the advantage of the controller's parameter on-line self-tuning, the computational workload from matching design of ACC controller is also efficiently reduced.

In this work, a new air hybrid engine is introduced in which two throttles are used to manage the engine load in three modes of operation i.e. braking, air motor, and conventional mode. The concept includes an air tank to store pressurized air during braking and rather than a fully variable valve timing (VVT) system, two throttles are utilized. Use of throttles can significantly reduce the complexity of air hybrid engines. The valves need three fixed timing schedules for the three modes of operation. To study this concept, for each mode, the results of engine simulations using GT-Power software are used to generate the operating maps. These maps show the maximum braking torque as well as maximum air motor torque in terms of air tank pressure and engine speed. Moreover, the resulting maps indicate the operating conditions under which each mode is more effective. Based on these maps, a power management strategy is developed to achieve improved fuel economy.

Forecasting the motion of the leading vehicle is a critical task for connected autonomous vehicles as it provides an efficient way to model the leading-following vehicle behavior and analyze the interactions. In this study, a personalized time-series modeling approach for leading vehicle trajectory prediction considering different driving styles is proposed. The method enables a precise, personalized trajectory prediction for leading vehicles with limited inter-vehicle communication signals, such as vehicle speed, acceleration, space headway, and time headway of the front vehicles. Based on the learning nature of human beings that a human always tries to solve problems based on grouping and similar experience, three different driving styles are first recognized based on an unsupervised clustering with a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM).

Alcohols, because of their potential to be produced from renewable sources and their characteristics suitable for clean combustion, are considered potential fuels which can be blended with fossil-based gasoline for use in internal combustion engines. As such, n-butanol has received a lot of attention in this regard and has shown to be a possible alternative to pure gasoline. The main issue preventing butanol's use in modern engines is its relatively high cost of production. Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation is one of the major methods to produce bio-butanol. The goal of this study is to investigate the combustion characteristics of the intermediate product in butanol production, namely ABE, and hence evaluate its potential as an alternative fuel. Acetone, n-butanol and ethanol were blended in a 3:6:1 volume ratio and then splash blended with pure ethanol-free gasoline with volumetric ratios of 0%, 20%, 40% to create various fuel blends.

A real-time control-oriented mean value engine plant model that includes engine thermals and cold starts is developed for a Toyota Prius 2015 plug-in hybrid engine in Modelica and MapleSim and validated experimentally. The model consists of an engine block model, intake and exhaust manifold models, and a throttle model. An advantage of the engine block model is the ability to compute the frictional Mean Effective Pressure during engine cold starts from calculated air, oil, and coolant temperatures at various locations in the engine block. Traditionally, engine thermals are modelled utilizing thermal resistances and capacitors. The proposed model utilizes linear graph theory with terminal equations to study the topology of the different components that affect engine thermals, including engine head, liner, coolant, and oil sump.

Due to the high power and energy density and also relative safety, lithium ion batteries are receiving increasing acceptability in industrial applications especially in transportation systems with electric traction such as electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles. In this regard, to ensure performance reliability, accurate modeling of calendar life of such batteries is a necessity. In fact, potential failure of Li-ion battery packs remains a barrier to commercialization. Battery pack life is a critical feature to warranty and maintenance planning for hybrid vehicles, and will require adaptive control systems to account for the loss in vehicle range, and loss in battery charge and discharge efficiency. Failure not only results in large replacement costs, but also potential safety concerns such as overheating or short circuiting which may lead to fires.

This paper presents a study of LPG lean burn in a motorcycle SI engine. The lean burn limits are compared by several ways. The relations of lean burn limit with the parameters, such as engine speed, compression ratio and advanced spark ignition etc. are tested. The experimental results show that larger throttle opening, lower engine speed, earlier spark ignition timing, larger electrode gap and higher compression ratio will extend the lean burn limit of LPG. The emission of a LPG engine, especially on NOx emission, can be significantly reduced by means of the lean burn technology.

Active control of low-frequency engine order noise helps to improve the passenger’s sense of hearing, so it has become one of the hot topics in the automotive field. Depth improvement of active noise control (ANC) performance from the perspective of novel algorithms has attracted the attention of researchers. The conventional notch dual-channel filtered-x least mean square (NDFxLMS) algorithm shows acceptable noise reduction for the elimination of engine order noise. To further enhance the steady-state ANC effect, this paper proposed two new notch algorithms: the notch dual-channel filtered-x recursive least square (NDFxRLS) algorithm and the notch dual-channel affine projection (NDAP) algorithm. Vehicle simulation tests show that both the proposed algorithms, especially the NDFxRLS algorithm, have a satisfying performance for the cancellation of interior noise from the engine.

Many design problems are discovered often late in the development process, when design flexibility is limited. It is the art of the refinement engineers to find a solution to any unpredicted issues at this stage. The refinement process contains many hours of testing and requires many prototypes. Having an accurate experimental model of the system in this phase could reduce refinement time significantly. One of the areas that usually require refinement and tuning late in the design process is engine and body mounting systems. In this paper, we introduce a technique to optimize the mounting system of a vehicle for a given objective function using experimental/numerical analysis. To obtain an accurate model of the vehicle, we introduce an experimental procedure based upon the substructuring method. The method eliminates the need for any accurate finite element method of the vehicle. Experimental results of the implementation of this approach to a real vehicle are presented.

In this study, application of differential braking strategy to remove the oscillatory instability or snaking behavior of an articulated steer vehicle is presented. First, a linearized model of the vehicle is described that is used to represent the equations of motion in the state-space form. Then, this model is utilized for designing a sliding mode controller to adjust the differential braking on the rear axle to stabilize the vehicle during the snaking. The performance of the resulting active control system is evaluated in different driving conditions by using the linearized model. Finally, the control system is incorporated into a virtual prototype of the vehicle in ADAMS, and its operation is examined. The results from the linear model analysis and simulations in ADAMS are reasonably consistent.

Vehicle lane keeping system is becoming a new research focus of drive assistant system except adaptive cruise control system. As we all known, vehicle lateral dynamics show strong nonlinear and time-varying with the variety of longitudinal velocity, especially tire’s mechanics characteristic will change from linear characteristic under low speed to strong nonlinear under high speed. For this reason, the traditional PID controller and even self-tuning PID controller, which need to know a precise vehicle lateral dynamics model to adjust the control parameter, are too difficult to get enough accuracy and the ideal control quality. Based on neural network’s ability of self-learning, adaptive and approximate to any nonlinear function, an adaptive PID control algorithm with BP neural network self-tuning online was proposed for vehicle lane keeping.

Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE), an intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol, is considered a promising alternative fuel because it not only preserves the advantages of oxygenated fuel which typically emit less pollutants compared to conventional diesel, but also lowers the cost of fuel recovery for each individual component during the fermentation. With the development of advanced ABE fermentation technology, the volumetric percentage of acetone, butanol and ethanol in the bio-solvents can be precisely controlled. In this respect, it is desirable to estimate the performance of different ABE blends to determine the best blend and optimize the production process accordingly. ABE fuels with different component ratio, (A: B: E: 6:3:1; 3:6:1; 0:10:0, vol. %), were blended with diesel and tested in a constant volume chamber.

For the purpose of predicting the interior noise of a passenger automobile at middle and high frequency, an energy finite element analysis (EFEA) model of the automobile was created using EFEA method. The excitations including engine mount excitation and road excitation were measured by road experiment at a speed of 120 km/h. The sound excitation was measured in a semi-anechoic chamber. And the wind excitation was calculated utilizing numeric computation method of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The sound pressure level (SPL) and energy density contours of the interior acoustic cavity of the automobile were presented at 2000 Hz. Meanwhile, the flexural energy density and flexural velocity of body plates were calculated. The SPL of interior noise was predicted and compared with the corresponding value of experiment.

This paper presents experimental studies of particulate emissions in a small SI engine fueled with LPG and gasoline fuels. A single cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled, 125cc EFI engine with gasoline fuel is used as the baseline engine. Characteristics of the particulate emissions of the two fuels are compared. Test results show that: there are great quantities of particulate emissions for both fuels, but the total numbers of particulate emissions for the two fuels are generally in the same level. The distribution of the particulate sizes is in bimodal type for the gasoline, but for the LPG its first peak is not markedly in some conditions. The particulate sizes of the second peak for the two fuels appear at about the same size. At middle loads and 3000r/min, the particulate emissions for both of the two fuels are the greatest.

A program of integrated electro-hydraulic braking system is proposed, and its structural composition and working principle are analyzed. According to the structural and mechanical characteristics of all key components, through some reasonable assumptions and simplifications, a motor, a brake master cylinder, four brake wheel cylinders, solenoid valves and an ESP (Electronic Stability Program) algorithm model is set up and simulations of typical braking conditions are carried out based on the Matlab/Simulink. Finally, after the assembly of each sub-model is complete and combining a vehicle which is set up in CarSim software environment, simulation tests and comprehensive performance analysis of the active safety stability control for a vehicle in double lane change and single lane change situations are carried out respectively. According to the dynamic characteristic curves of system, the effects of different structural and control parameters on braking performance are analyzed.

This paper presents an experimental study of the emission characteristics of a small Spark-Ignited, LPG engine. A single cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled, 125cc SI engine for motorcycle is modified for using LPG fuel. The power output of LPG is above 95% power output of gasoline. The emission characteristics of LPG are compared with the gasoline. The test result shows that LPG for small SI engine will help to reduce the emission level of motorcycles. The HC and CO emission level can be reduced greatly, but NOx emissions are increased. The emission of motorcycle using LPG shows the potential to meet the more strict regulation.

An air-cooled, four-stroke, 125 cc electronic gasoline fuel injection SI engine for motorcycles is altered to burn ethanol fuel. The effects of nozzle orifice size, fuel injection duration, spark timing and the excess air/ fuel ratio on engine power output, fuel and energy consumptions and engine exhaust emission levels are studied on an engine test bed. The results show that the maximum engine power output is increased by 5.4% and the maximum torque output is increased by 1.9% with the ethanol fuel in comparison with the baseline. At full load and 7000 r/min, HC emission is decreased by 38% and CO emission is decreased 46% on average over the whole engine speed range. However, NOx levels are increased to meet the maximum power output. The experiments of the spark timing show that the levels of HC and NOx emission are decreased markedly by the delay of spark timing.

The drive to improve and optimize hybrid vehicle performance is increasing with the growth of the market. With this market growth, the automotive industry has recognized a need to train and educate the next generation of engineers in hybrid vehicle design. The University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team (UWAFT), as part of the EcoCAR 3 competition, has developed a control strategy for a novel parallel-split hybrid architecture. This architecture features an engine, transmission and two electric motors; one pre-transmission motor and one post-transmission motor. The control strategy operates these powertrain components in a series, parallel, and all electric power flow, switching between these strategies to optimize the energy efficiency of the vehicle. Control strategies for these three power flows are compared through optimization of efficiencies within the powertrain.

In order to improve the mode switching performance of parallel hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and make better use of the dynamics of the vehicle, this paper proposes a three-stage control method for the start-up mode of start-up, speed synchronization, and clutch slip based on the response characteristics of actual vehicle components and the complex working conditions of the actual road. In the speed synchronization phase, a coordinated control method of “engine speed active following + continuously variable transmission (CVT) speed ratio motor speed limiting” is proposed. The real vehicle test results show that the engine starting-up coordinated control method can significantly accelerate the speed synchronization and shorten the starting-up mode duration during the rapid acceleration, so that the vehicle’s power performance can be well played and the ride comfort can be effectively guaranteed.