Numeric Simulation of Electric Powertrain for Automotive Application

Air pollution level in an urban area is a noteworthy concern among many countries. In the continuous quest for innovating new technology to improve the fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions levels from the automotive vehicle, the automotive sector is making efforts in converting combustion vehicle to Hybrid - electric or Pure Electric vehicle. Governments around the globe are constantly attempting to control and reduce air pollution levels through various policies. The main reason for the policy is to increase the country's energy security, economic vitality, reduce the carbon from air and quality of life. Since the introduction of new policies by the UK Government for upcoming year, one of the viable opinion identified by the automotive industries was the application of alternative vehicle powertrain. Therefore, the overall aim of this project is to model a fully electric vehicle and evaluating the performance using real - world drive cycle. Pure Electrical Vehicles (PEVs) and Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) are vehicles with many electric components in compare to conventional ones. The power train actually comprises of electrical machines, power electronics and electrical energy storage devices such as battery, super capacitors which are attached to mechanical parts and internal combustion engine (ICE) for HEVs. This report presents a systematic methodology for assessing new technology for shifting from ICE vehicle powertrain to electric powertrain with the help of powertrain simulation tool GT-Drive based on legislative drive cycle. Computer simulation is a valuable tool for analysing hardware components and predicting vehicle components with different powertrain configurations. The present work is divided into 3 main key stages to achieve the overall aim of building Electric vehicle. First stage will be about building and validating ICE vehicle, show the results like Fuel economy and Emissions. Second stage will take about converting ICE Vehicle to Hybrid Electric vehicle based on Toyota Prius. It also shows results and comparisons between ICE Vehicle and Hybrid Electric Vehicle in terms of Fuel Economy and Emissions. Finally, third stage will talk all about modelling and validating Pure Electric Vehicle, It aims to identify design parameters based on simulation for optimizing the performance of the electric vehicle for the real-world driving conditions. Comparison of Energy consumption between ICE, HEVs & PEVs will be presented. Main Outcomes of the work: This paper helps to represent the fundamentals of electric vehicles so that one can easily understand the design standards, procedure and principles of operation. One can see that there is a massive difference in energy consumption by switching from Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle to Pure Electric Vehicle (PEV) i.e. around 60% of reduction for Brookes Student Drive Cycle. Also one can notice that there is also some reduction in terms of Fuel consumption and Emissions when switching from ICE vehicle to HEVs powertrain. Main factor that effects a lot is the control strategy which can be designed according to the driving conditions and Drive Cycles. Statement on Future directions: To expand the driving capabilities, regenerative braking plays a vital part to reuse the lost energy from the vehicle while deceleration via braking. Here comes the main role of the energy source such as ultra-capacitor, flywheel, and electrochemical batteries to overcome the problem. The regenerative braking has the ability to save the waste energy up to 8- 25% (S. Malode, 2016). From the obtained results it helps as a critical reference for designing the structures of the battery pack and planning the cooling strategies