Powertrain Testing Research Articles

Data-enhanced Battery Simulation for BEV Powertrain Testing

Data-enhanced Battery Simulation for BEV Powertrain Testing

Testing EV/PHEV Batteries

To accelerate battery development, a new line of battery testers, simulators and safety test equipment has been designed and built by experts in electric vehicle powertrain testing

Application of the X-in-the-Loop Testing Method in the FCV Hybrid Degree Test

With the development of fuel cell vehicle technology, an effective testing method that can be applied to develop and verify the fuel cell vehicle powertrain system is urgently required. This paper presents the X-in-the-Loop (XiL) testing method in the fuel cell vehicle (FCV) hybrid degree test to resolve the first and key issues for the powertrain system design, and the test process and scenarios were designed. The hybrid degree is redefined into the static hybrid degree for system architecture design and the dynamic hybrid degree for vehicle control strategy design, and an integrated testing platform was introduced and a testing application was implemented by following the designed testing flowchart with two loops. Experimental validations show that the sizing of the FCE (Fuel Cell Engine), battery pack, and traction motor with the powertrain architecture can be determined, the control strategy can be evaluated seamlessly, and a systematic powertrain testing solution can be achieved through the whole development process. This research has developed a new testing platform and proposed a novel testing method on the fuel cell vehicle powertrain system, which will be a contribution to fuel cell vehicle technology and its industrialization.

Hybrid polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell-lithium-ion battery powertrain testing platform - hybrid fuel cell electric vehicle emulator

Summary A testing and validation platform for hybrid fuel cell (FC)–lithium-ion battery (LIB) powertrain systems is investigated. The hybrid FC electric vehicle emulator enables testing of hybrid system components and complete hybrid power modules up to 25 kW for application in electric light-duty vehicles, light electric vehicles and so forth. A hybrid system comprising a 10-kWel low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane FC stack and an 11.5-kWh LIB pack is installed. The system supplies power to a 20-kW permanent magnet synchronous motor and a 25-kW alternating current asynchronous, electrically programmable dynamometer is used to simulate the vehicle load during testing at dynamic drive cycle. The steady-state performance tests of the direct current (DC) motor, DC/DC converter, low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane FC stack and LIB are performed as well as dynamic tests of the complete hybrid system. The Economic Commission for Europe driving cycle is selected as a reference cycle to validate the investigated hybrid FC–LIB powertrain. An efficiency of 83% and 95% is measured for electric motor and DC/DC converter, respectively. An average stack efficiency of 50% is achieved. An average hydrogen consumption of 3.9 g * km−1 is reached during the Economic Commission for Europe driving cycle test. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Stand for testing the electrical race car engine

An engine test stand created especially for research of electrical race car is described in the paper. The car is an aim of Silesian Greenpower project whose participants build and test electrical vehicles to take part in international races in Great Britain. The engine test stand is used to test and measure the characteristics of vehicles and their engines. It has been designed particularly to test the electric cars engineered by students of Silesian Greenpower project. The article contains a description how the test stand works and shows its versatility in many areas. The paper presents both construction of the test stand, control system and sample results of conducted research. The engine test stand was designed and modified using PLM Siemens NX 8.5. The construction of the test stand is highly modular, which means it can be used both for testing the vehicle itself or for tests without the vehicle. The test stand has its own wheel, motor, powertrain and braking system with second engine. Such solution enables verifying various concepts without changing the construction of the vehicle. The control system and measurement system are realized by enabling National Instruments product myRIO (RIO - Reconfigurable Input/Output). This controller in combination with powerful LabVIEW environment performs as an advanced tool to control torque and speed simultaneously. It is crucial as far as the test stand is equipped in two motors - the one being tested and the braking one. The feedback loop is realized by an optical encoder cooperating with the rotor mounted on the wheel. The results of tests are shown live on the screen both as a chart and as single values. After performing several tests there is a report generated. The engine test stand is widely used during process of the Silesian Greenpower vehicle design. Its versatility enables powertrain testing, wheels and tires tests, thermal analysis and more.

Synthetic Driving Cycles in the Area of Powertrain Testing

Synthetic Driving Cycles in the Area of Powertrain Testing

Powertrain test cell and its test procedure development for greenhouse gas emission measurements

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a first-ever program to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve fuel efficiency of heavy-duty trucks and buses in 2011. The rule was the first phase of the multi-phase GHG reduction approach. The agencies, working together with industry stakeholders, are currently developing different concepts that could be considered for determining compliance with any future phase of GHG and fuel efficiency regulations. The agencies are evaluating a wide array of options, including full vehicle simulation, engine-in-the-loop (EIL) testing, powertrain-in-the-loop (powertrain) testing, and chassis dynamometer testing. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. Full vehicle simulation is ideal for repeatability and managing a large number of vehicle configurations, but it is generally accepted that high-accuracy simulation of the thermal, chemical, and fluid dynamic processes in the engine and aftertreatment is very difficult to achieve. EPA and SwRI have developed a powertrain test cell for the purposes of evaluating powertrain test correlation with chassis testing and simulation results, and validating simulation models. This paper describes the sizing of a powertrain test cell, modifications required to a standard engine test cell for powertrain testing, and a comparison to chassis dynamometer results.

Definition of procedures for heavy duty powertrain evaluation

This paper proposes strategies for powertrain evaluation that allow a consistent evaluation of performance across the entire powertrain operating range. Two options for powertrain evaluation are proposed: powertrain testing, and powertrain-in-loop testing. Simulation is used to illustrate how the procedures could be implemented. The key feature of the proposed procedures is the linking of the engine certification test cycles with aligned powertrain and vehicle cycles. This would allow consistent evaluation of emissions for engine and powertrain, and would allow development efforts to build on experience gained in years of emissions compliance work. The paper uses the US EPA heavy duty engine transient federal test procedure (FTP) test and the steady state supplemental emissions test (SET) as a starting point. As with the engine cycles, the proposed procedures would be vehicle independent thereby minimising the proliferation of development efforts.

Modeling, Control, and Experimental Validation of a Transient Hydrostatic Dynamometer

Due to its superior power-to-weight ratio, a hydrostatic dynamometer is an ideal candidate for transient engine or powertrain testing. It can load or motor the engine to follow any desired speed and acceleration profiles for real-world applications. Given its high bandwidth, the hydrostatic dynamometer can be further used to emulate the dynamics of hybrid powertrains and, therefore, investigate the interactions between the engine and the hybrid power source in real time. This will greatly expedite the research of various hybrid powertrain architectures and control methodologies, without actually building the complete physical system. This paper presents the design, modeling, tracking control, and experimental investigation of a transient hydrostatic dynamometer. A ninth-order physics-based dynamic model for the dynamometer is formulated and then identified and validated with experimental data. To control the dynamometer to emulate the real-world engine speed/torque profiles, two different nonlinear control strategies are investigated and implemented. First, a nonlinear model-based inversion plus PID control is designed to achieve precise tracking. Then, a state feedback control via feedback linearization is designed and implemented. Experimental results demonstrate precise tracking performance with less than 5% tracking error for both transient and steady-state operations.