Road-to-rig-to-desktop: Virtual development using real-time engine modelling and powertrain co-simulation

Abstract

By front-loading of the conventional vehicle testing to engine test bench or even further forward to offline simulations, it is possible to assess a large variation of powertrain design parameters and testing manoeuvres in the early development stages. This entails a substantial cost reduction compared to physical vehicle testing and hence an optimisation of the modern powertrain development process. This approach is often referred to as road-to-rig-to-desktop. To demonstrate the potential of this road-to-rig-to-desktop methodology as a seamless development process, a crank angle–resolved real-time engine model for a turbocharged gasoline engine was built with the simulation tool GT-POWER®. The model was validated with measurement data from an engine test bench and integrated into a vehicle co-simulation, which also includes a dual clutch transmission, the chassis, the environment and the automated driver. The most relevant functions of the engine and the transmission control systems were implemented in a Simulink-based software control unit. To verify the engine model in the transient vehicle simulation, two 900-s time windows from a 2-h real driving emission test, representing urban and motorway conditions, are simulated using the developed co-simulation platform. The simulation results are compared with the respective vehicle measurement data. The fuel consumption deviation caused by the combustion engine model is within 5%. The transient system behaviour and the dominant engine operation points could be predicted with a satisfying accuracy.

Scalable Modeling Approach and Robust Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing of an Optimized Interleaved Bidirectional HV DC/DC Converter for Electric Vehicle Drivetrains

“…This model consists of 5 cascaded RC Foster stages. Foster network simplicity lies in the fact that each RC stage can be transformed into a first-order transfer function, as depicted in FIGURE 9 and equation (8), which can easily be implemented in an equation-based simulator, illustrated in FIGURE 10. The sum of the temperature drop of each RC stage represents the junction-to-case temperature difference, where their input is the semiconductor's power loss and their output the temperature drop.…”

“…These challenges demand the growth of the efficacy of the development process and testing time, leading to virtualization in the design phase. Therefore, modelling and simulation have been established as a mandatory part of virtualisation tool at the conceptual design stage in the place of physical tests, as real-time (RT) testing is a time-consuming and highly costly process [6]- [8]. Hence, accurate and scalable modelling of the EV PE components is a crucial method to achieve a highly reliable simulation tool for system characterizations, optimization, validation and performance measurement in the early design phase.…”

Statistically supported real driving emission calibration: Using cycle generation to provide vehicle-specific and statistically representative test scenarios for Euro 7

“…Furthermore, cyber-physical hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) test setups—especially engine-in-the-loop (EiL) test benches—can be used, to simulate the vehicle behavior in a real-world environment on real routes. 23,43–45 Performing these tests on the engine test bench or emission chassis dynamometer can lead to an estimation of what to expect in a RDE test setup, while being able to obtain reproducible data. In particular, EiL setups allow to increase the amount of achievable tests, as the duration to soak and condition the test vehicle can be reduced and components can be exchanged quicker than in a real vehicle configuration.…”

Semi-physical state and parameter estimation of diesel combustion phases for real-time applications

“…1 To reduce costs and accelerate the engine development process, simulation models—in particular real-time capable models—are used in all stages of development. 2…”