Simulation Tools for Hybrid Electric Vehicle Architecture Simulations

Increasingly stringent regulations on emissions require automobile manufacturers to find new ways to reduce the emissions produced by their vehicles. If current trends provide for an indication of where the automotive industry is headed, hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) will become very prevalent in the market in coming years. These technologies are all relatively new and still need much development before they can hold a significant place in the automotive market. It is for this reason that companies are investing heavily in training the next generation of engineers to work on this problem. EcoCAR 3, a four year long Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition (AVTC), is one way companies are pursuing this. EcoCAR 3 challenges the engineering students to modify a stock Chevrolet Camaro, donated by GM, to reduce the vehicle’s energy consumption and tailpipe emissions, while maintaining standard vehicle performance. Due to the presence of multiple components in a HEV (engine, battery-pack and at least one electric machine), the complexity of optimizing the operation of the vehicle’s powertrain components significantly increases in comparison to a conventional vehicle. One of the topics that EcoCAR 3 series stresses during year 1 is architecture selection for the Chevrolet Camaro, which involves the team to select a vehicle architecture that meets the goals of both the competition and the team. Increasing demand for HEV designs require automated modeling and simulation tools to construct a design space search. Composability and scalability are highly desirable in these simulators to provide design candidates. The work described in this project focuses towards the tools developed and the validation done for these tools. These tools were developed for the EcoCAR 3 team of the Ohio State Universiy, which would provide assistance in generating different size engine fuel consumption maps and different size electric machine efficiency maps quickly. The maps generated by these tools can then be utilized to test how varying engine and electric machine sizes can affect the overall performance of the vehicle with different architectures.No embargoAcademic Major: Mechanical Engineerin

A comprehensive study of key Electric Vehicle (EV) components, technologies, challenges, impacts, and future direction of development

Abstract: Electric vehicles (EV), including Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV), Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV), Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV), are becoming more commonplace in the transportation sector in recent times. As the present trend suggests, this mode of transport is likely to replace internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in the near future. Each of the main EV components has a number of technologies that are currently in use or can become prominent in the future. EVs can cause significant impacts on the environment, power system, and other related sectors. The present power system could face huge instabilities with enough EV penetration, but with proper management and coordination, EVs can be turned into a major contributor to the successful implementation of the smart grid concept. There are possibilities of immense environmental benefits as well, as the EVs can extensively reduce the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the transportation sector. However, there are some major obstacles for EVs to overcome before totally replacing ICE vehicles. This paper is focused on reviewing all the useful data available on EV configurations, battery energy sources, electrical machines, charging techniques, optimization techniques, impacts, trends, and possible directions of future developments. Its objective is to provide an overall picture of the current EV technology and ways of future development to assist in future researches in this sector

Modelling and Control of Switched Reluctance Machines

Today, switched reluctance machines (SRMs) play an increasingly important role in various sectors due to advantages such as robustness, simplicity of construction, low cost, insensitivity to high temperatures, and high fault tolerance. They are frequently used in fields such as aeronautics, electric and hybrid vehicles, and wind power generation. This book is a comprehensive resource on the design, modeling, and control of SRMs with methods that demonstrate their good performance as motors and generators

Modelling and Control of Switched Reluctance Machines

Today, switched reluctance machines (SRMs) play an increasingly important role in various sectors due to advantages such as robustness, simplicity of construction, low cost, insensitivity to high temperatures, and high fault tolerance. They are frequently used in fields such as aeronautics, electric and hybrid vehicles, and wind power generation. This book is a comprehensive resource on the design, modeling, and control of SRMs with methods that demonstrate their good performance as motors and generators

Design and Application of Electrical Machines

Electrical machines are one of the most important components of the industrial world. They are at the heart of the new industrial revolution, brought forth by the development of electromobility and renewable energy systems. Electric motors must meet the most stringent requirements of reliability, availability, and high efficiency in order, among other things, to match the useful lifetime of power electronics in complex system applications and compete in the market under ever-increasing pressure to deliver the highest performance criteria. Today, thanks to the application of highly efficient numerical algorithms running on high-performance computers, it is possible to design electric machines and very complex drive systems faster and at a lower cost. At the same time, progress in the field of material science and technology enables the development of increasingly complex motor designs and topologies. The purpose of this Special Issue is to contribute to this development of electric machines. The publication of this collection of scientific articles, dedicated to the topic of electric machine design and application, contributes to the dissemination of the above information among professionals dealing with electrical machines

Improving high-speed electrical machines by amorphous metals

This dissertation is about the application of an amorphous magnetic material (AMM) to a sleeve-free interior permanent-magnet (PM) rotor of high-speed synchronous motors. Currently, surface-mounted PM rotors are commonly used in the high-speed motors. In order to protect the high-speed rotors from centrifugal forces, high-strength non-ferromagnetic sleeves are required. This results in a reduced torque density, lowered flux-weakening ability, and highen losses of the motor caused by pulse-width-modulation (PWM) voltage. Hence, a sleeve-free rotor structure is beneficial. AMM has been used for transformers and inductors for decades. It is well-known due to its low core losses. However, because of its high hardness and brittleness, slotting becomes a key obstacle to its application in electrical machines. Hence, this material has not been widely applied in the electrical machines yet. An important property, the high mechanical strength of the AMM has been ignored eagerly. In this work, an interior PM rotor made from AMM for high-speed operation is studied. The high mechanical strength and the low core losses of the AMM are fully taken use of. Because of the difficulty in slotting of the AMM, this material is not used for the stator and a conventional silicon steel will be used. In order to fulfill the proposed high-speed rotor, the properties of the AMM in terms of electromagnetics and mechanics are experimentally studied. The influences of the mechanical stress and temperature on the electromagnetic properties of the AMM cores are well studied. Based on the measured data, a prototype is designed and optimized in terms of electromagnetics, mechanics and thermal behaviors. To ensure the success of the prototype, the slotting methods are also investigated and wire electrical discharge machining method is selected for manufacturing of the AMM rotor core. In order to show the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed high-speed AMM rotor, a surface-mounted PM rotor covered by a carbon-fiber sleeve is designed as a comparison. Since the influences of the PWM inverter on the losses of the high-speed motors are significant and this problem has not been thoroughly investigated before, the dissertation goes into a further research on it to fill the gap in this field. Finally, two prototypes are built and tested. The design results are verified through experiments. It is verified that by applying the AMM to the proposed rotor, the performance of the high-speed PM motor is significantly improved, such as better flux weaking ability, higher torque and power densities and higher efficiency. Based on the tested data of the prototypes, it is confirmed that the AMM has high potential in the application of high-speed high-power-density PM motors

Semi-Analytical Approach Towards Design and Optimization of Induction Machines for Electric Vehicles

Electric machine design is a comprehensive task depending on the several factors, such as material resource limitations and economic factors. Therefore, an induction machine is a promising candidate because of the absence of magnetic material in the rotor. However, the conventional design approach can neither reflect the advances of the induction machine(IM) design nor exploit the trade-offs between design factors and the multi-physics nature of the electrical machine. Therefore, proposing fast and accurate novel methods to design, develop and analyze IMs using electromagnetic field oriented approaches is competitive to the old-fashion numerical methods. To achieve improved IM design from a baseline design to an optimal design, this dissertation: (1) Investigates the challenges of the high speed IM design specified for the electric vehicle application at the rated operating condition considering electromagnetic boundaries for the reasonable saturation level within a compact volume; (2) Proposes a new design approach of IM using modified equivalent circuit parameters to reduce spatial harmonics because of slotting effect and skewing effect; and also presents the importance of the 3-D analysis over 2-D analysis while developing the IM; (3) Proposes a novel electromagnetic field oriented mathematical model considering the slotting effect and axial flux variation because of skewing rotor bars to evaluate the IM performance with a lower and precise computational effort; (4) developed baseline IM is optimized with genetic algorithm incorporated in proposed subdomain model to improve the torque-speed profile. In order to further simplify the optimization procedure, a parametric and sensitivity based design approach is implemented to reduce the design variables. To evaluate the proposed optimal IM with extended constant power region and high torque density within a compact volume using novel 3-D subdomain model, the machine has been prototyped and tested from low to high speed under no-load and loaded condition. Electrical circuit parameter variation is demonstrated and compared to the one simulated in the FEA environment. This innovation can be applied to a family of electric machines with various topologies

Impact of electrically assisted turbocharging on the transient response of an off-highway diesel engine

Engine boosting via turbocharging is a method to increase the engine power output with minimal or no increase in engine parasitic, frictional and pumping losses. Turbocharging in conjunction with engine down-sizing and down-speeding allows a reduction of engine fuel consumption, while maintaining a high engine power output. However, turbocharging introduces a lag in engine transient response, caused by the finite amount of time required by the turbocharger to accelerate, which has to be minimized. Electric turbocharger assistance consists of coupling an electric motor/generator to a standard turbocharger. The scope of the motor/generator is to increase the power available to accelerate the rotor assembly, so that the time to boost is reduced. The motor/generator could also be utilized to brake the turbocharger to control boost and avoid over-speeds, thus replacing the conventional waste-gate. Furthermore, electric assistance allows turbocompounding to be implemented. Turbocompounding improves the engine efficiency by utilizing the turbine and motor/generator to recuperate additional exhaust flow energy. In this thesis, the electric turbocharger assistance impact on the turbocharger and engine performance is studied. An electrically assisted turbocharger prototype has been developed by industrial partners and it has been tested by the author of this thesis. The performance of the turbocharger turbine and motor/generator has been characterized over the full speed range and the impact of the electric assistance on the turbine flow has been investigated experimentally. It has not been possible to characterize the turbine up to choking conditions, so the data has been extrapolated via a mean-line model. The performance data obtained has been utilized to generate a model of the assisted turbocharger, which has been coupled to a one-dimensional model of a non-highway 7-litre diesel engine. This model has been utilized to study the impact of electric turbocharger assistance on the engine transient performance. The electrical machine characterization revealed that the switched reluctance motor/generator operates efficiently up to a speed of 135,000 rev/min, making it one of the fastest running switched reluctance machines of this size. The peak machine efficiency is 93% (excluding the turbocharger bearing losses) and the maximum power output measured is 5.3 kW in generating mode and 4.3 kW in motoring mode. The motor/generator rotor aerodynamic drag loss has been calculated via computational fluid dynamics software and has been found to be 63 W at 140,000 rev/min. Via a novel experimental technique, it has been possible to characterize the turbocharger turbine down to an expansion ratio of 1.00. This experiment revealed that the mass flow rate drops to zero at an expansion ratio higher than unity and that below this critical pressure ratio the turbine flow is reversed. The characterization of the turbine during speed transients showed that the operating point on the performance map deviates from the quasi-steady line. This indicates that minor unsteady effects occur in the turbine and exhaust manifold flow. A further experiment revealed that the motor/generator torque oscillations have a negligible impact on the turbine performance. The engine simulations showed that the ideal electric assistance motoring power for this application is in the 5 to 10 kW range. A 5 kW machine reduces the engine speed drop, which occurs when the engine load is suddenly increased, by up to 83%, depending on the initial load and load step size, and reduces the time to recover the original speed by up to 86%. The simulations also revealed that electric assistance is more effective than the turbine variable geometry system in improving the engine transient response, but the variable geometry system is useful to optimize boost for engine specific fuel consumption over different engine loading conditions.Open Acces

High-Speed Electric Drives: A Step Towards System Design

Electric drives applications have been worldwide adopted for the transportation electrification. An electric drive system is constituted by two main components: the power electronics converter and the electrical machine. Traditionally the design workflow consisted in the separate realization of these two parts, by different teams or even organizations. This requires strong assumptions regarding operating conditions and may lead to actual performance at system level far from the one expected. In this article, a unified design methodology of the two sub-systems is presented considering the true operating conditions, allowing a more accurate assessment of power losses at system level and identifying the influence of the converter design choices on the electric machine performance. As a case study, this article presents a comparative analysis among three different converter topologies designed to drive a 8.5 kW-120 krpm surface PMSM. The study aims at comparing the considered systems in terms of overall efficiency, losses distribution and system complexity. At first converters are simulated in Matlab-Simulink to estimate the losses and the current waveforms, that are then used in the Finite Element model of the electrical machine to estimate the loss components in a real scenario. The models developed are then validated by means of experimental measurements. This article highlights the new understanding that can be gained by considering the interactions between sub-systems, allowing a more conscious choice of the converter topology to achieve optimal overall performance

Design and Advanced Model Predictive Control of Wide Bandgap Based Power Converters

The field of power electronics (PE) is experiencing a revolution by harnessing the superior technical characteristics of wide-band gap (WBG) materials, namely Silicone Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN). Semiconductor devices devised using WBG materials enable high temperature operation at reduced footprint, offer higher blocking voltages, and operate at much higher switching frequencies compared to conventional Silicon (Si) based counterpart. These characteristics are highly desirable as they allow converter designs for challenging applications such as more-electric-aircraft (MEA), electric vehicle (EV) power train, and the like. This dissertation presents designs of a WBG based power converters for a 1 MW, 1 MHz ultra-fast offboard EV charger, and 250 kW integrated modular motor drive (IMMD) for a MEA application. The goal of these designs is to demonstrate the superior power density and efficiency that are achievable by leveraging the power of SiC and GaN semiconductors. Ultra-fast EV charging is expected to alleviate the challenge of range anxiety , which is currently hindering the mass adoption of EVs in automotive market. The power converter design presented in the dissertation utilizes SiC MOSFETs embedded in a topology that is a modification of the conventional three-level (3L) active neutral-point clamped (ANPC) converter. A novel phase-shifted modulation scheme presented alongside the design allows converter operation at switching frequency of 1 MHz, thereby miniaturizing the grid-side filter to enhance the power density. IMMDs combine the power electronic drive and the electric machine into a single unit, and thus is an efficient solution to realize the electrification of aircraft. The IMMD design presented in the dissertation uses GaN devices embedded in a stacked modular full-bridge converter topology to individually drive each of the motor coils. Various issues and solutions, pertaining to paralleling of GaN devices to meet the high current requirements are also addressed in the thesis. Experimental prototypes of the SiC ultra-fast EV charger and GaN IMMD were built, and the results confirm the efficacy of the proposed designs. Model predictive control (MPC) is a nonlinear control technique that has been widely investigated for various power electronic applications in the past decade. MPC exploits the discrete nature of power converters to make control decisions using a cost function. The controller offers various advantages over, e.g., linear PI controllers in terms of fast dynamic response, identical performance at a reduced switching frequency, and ease of applicability to MIMO applications. This dissertation also investigates MPC for key power electronic applications, such as, grid-tied VSC with an LCL filter and multilevel VSI with an LC filter. By implementing high performance MPC controllers on WBG based power converters, it is possible to formulate designs capable of fast dynamic tracking, high power operation at reduced THD, and increased power density