International Journal of Vehicle Performance (5 papers in press)

Regular Issues

• An experimental investigation on exhaust heat recovery system of the gasoline driven vehicle for space conditioning applications  
  by Amit Kumar Tiwary, Amit Kumar, Sharifuddin Mondal 
  Abstract: The thermal efficiency of the internal combustion engines (ICEs) varies in between 30% to 35% and does not exceed beyond 35%. The reasons behind such low efficiency are the losses such as heat carry away by cooling water and heat rejected to the atmosphere in the form of exhaust gases. A large amount of fuel energy in the form of heat is remains unused. Hence the need of recycling waste heat of the automotive exhaust is one of the important tasks to enhance the thermal efficiency of the ICEs. Recycling of the waste heat from the exhaust as well from the coolant not only increases the thermal efficiency of the ICEs but also contribute in reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other gases. Secondly, through regenerative braking system in hybrid hydraulic vehicle 70-80% of the vehicles braking/decelerating energy could harvest. Such facility will reduce the impact on payload capacity, especially for heavy vehicle classes. In this context, an efficient as well as cost effective technology to generate electricity and later using this electrical power to run the automotive spaced air conditioning unit (Heat Pump) is proposed. A thermoelectric generator (TEG) module and a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) module are used for generating the electricity for heating and cooling effect in automotive spaced air conditioning unit. With such goal kept in mind, the present study will be helpful for the practicing engineer in developing as well as enhancing the thermal efficiency and exhaust heat recovery of the gasoline engine.
  Keywords: waste heat recovery system; thermal efficiency; thermoelectric generator (TEG) module; thermoelectric cooler (TEC/HP) module; seebeck effects; Peltier effect.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJVP.2023.10053636
   
  
• Lateral stability control of distributed electric drive articulated heavy vehicles  
  by Xinxin Kong, Zhaowen Deng, Wei Gao, Baohua Wang 
  Abstract: In order to improve the high-speed stability of distributed electric drive articulated heavy vehicles, a direct yaw torque hierarchical controller has been designed in conjunction with distributed electric drive technology. The upper layer is a sliding-model control-based decision control for the additional yaw torque, The lower controller adopts the equal proportional distribution method to allocate the torque of the wheels. Finally, the effectiveness of the control strategy was verified and analysed with the co-simulation platform of TruckSim and MATLAB/Simulink, and the working condition of double lane change (DLC) was selected. The results show that the stability of both the tractor and trailer of the designed SMC distributed electric drive articulated heavy-duty vehicle is improved, effectively improving the lateral stability of the distributed electric drive articulated heavy-duty vehicle.
  Keywords: articulated heavy vehicle; distributed electric drive; SMC; sliding mode control; lateral stability; torque distribution.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJVP.2023.10053671
   
  
• Six-sigma robust design optimisation of an electric bus considering crashworthiness and lightweight  
  by Xiujian Yang, Dian Fan, Peng Zhou, Shengbing Zhang 
  Abstract: In this study, the optimising design of the front structure of an electric bus is conducted orienting the performance of lightweight and crashworthiness. The optimisation is performed by optimising the cross section of the steel beam of the body frame by the mesh morphing technology. The optimising design variables are determined based on sensitivity analysis with the entropy weight theory and the order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. Multi-objective design optimisation is performed by integrating optimal Latin hypercube sampling, response surface methodology (RSM), and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) to achieve the objectives of minimum mass of the body frame and minimum intrusion of the steering wheel. Finally, the six-sigma robust optimising design is performed to improve the reliability and sigma level of response. After robust optimisation, the weight of bus body is reduced, and also the peak acceleration at the passenger compartment center declines considerably.
  Keywords: electric bus; mesh morphing technology; crashworthiness; lightweight; TOPSIS; robust optimisation.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJVP.2023.10053718
   
  
• Analytical model for combined ride and handling with leaf spring suspension in commercial vehicles  
  by S. Anandakumar, C. Sujatha, Suryanarayana A.N. Prasad 
  Abstract: Ride comfort and handling are very important characteristics that influence a customers decision in purchasing a vehicle. Hence designing the suspension characteristics to improve the ride and handling performances is very crucial. During the product development cycle, the suspension system parameters are optimised through a number of iterations using design simulation tools such as ADAMS, TruckSim, etc. before the actual prototype is developed. The simulation time for iterations in these design-simulation tools is very high. In the present paper, an attempt has been made to reduce the iteration time by developing an analytical model in MATLAB for combined vertical and lateral dynamics simulation with 11 degrees of freedom. The suspension system, i.e., rigid leaf spring, is transformed into a three-link mechanism by two-point deflection method as described in SAE AE-II spring design manual. The simulation results correlated well with ADAMS/Car simulation results.
  Keywords: ride; handling; commercial vehicle; leaf spring; SAE 3 link; single bump test; single bump test; combined ride and handling test; simulation; product development.
  
  
• Shifting control optimisation of automatic transmission with congested conditions identification based on the support vector machine  
  by Shang Peng, Guangqiang Wu, Kaixuan Chen, Minkai Jiang, Lijuan Ju 
  Abstract: Vehicles in congested conditions are often accompanied by frequent acceleration and deceleration, but also cause the phenomenon of frequent transmission shifting. In this paper, state parameters such as speed, accelerator pedal opening, and brake pedal opening are selected and preprocessed to obtain the relevant features of the vehicle state. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to reduce the dimension of these features to simplify the computation. Then, support vector machine (SVM) optimised by the genetic algorithm is used to identify congested conditions. Finally, based on the identification results and vehicle dynamics, the shift curve was corrected to reduce the frequent shifting phenomenon in congested conditions. Through the classification test of the training set and test set, the method used in this paper can effectively identify the congested conditions, and the simulation test results show that use of the corrected shift curve can effectively reduce the frequent shifting in congested conditions.
  Keywords: automatic transmission; congested conditions; PCA; principal component analysis; SVM; support vector machine; shifting control optimisation.