The Development of Motor Tandem Axle Module in Series Hybrid Commercial Vehicles

The growing issues of energy shortage and the environmental crisis have resulted in new challenges for the automotive industry. Conventional commercial vehicles such as refuse trucks and delivery vehicles consume significantly more energy than other on-road vehicles and emit more emissions. It is important to make these vehicles more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly. Hybrid power-trains provide a good solution for commercial vehicles because they not only provide optimum dynamic properties but also substantially reduce emissions. For most commercial vehicle power-trains, the internal combustion engine (ICE) is the only power source that provides power to the drive-line. The emission reduction faces a limit since a high-powered engine is required to meet the dynamic properties of those heavy-duty vehicles. Also, the high-powered engine cannot avoid operating in low efficient areas due to the fact that these vehicles continually drive at low speeds on designated city routes. However, hybrid power-trains allow commercial vehicles to select lower powered engines because they are equipped with multi-power sources to supply torque together to the drive-line. Therefore, hybrid power-trains are a natural fit for commercial vehicles. For this reason, an alternative series hybrid drive-train system, which contains an electric tandem axle module, has been designed for those heavy-duty commercial vehicles like city transits and refuse trucks. In order to prove the theoretical efficiency and practicability of this application, the modeling methodology for specification of system architectures and hybrid drive-train control strategies will be provided in this paper with the demonstration of simulation methods and results