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Overview
The move to electrified cars will have both dramatic and disruptive consequences to consumers, automakers, battery producers, oil producers, and electric utilities, just to name a few. The change will also create enormous opportunities, including the reduction of CO2 emissions and global warming levels, less dependence on foreign oil, technological independence and the creation of very large new industries.
Hybrid vehicles are causing the auto industry to change at a faster rate than any other time in history. With the rapid growth of hybrid technologies comes the increased demand for advanced testing and development solutions capable of meeting the unique challenges the vehicle electrification presents.
The Challenges
Hybrid electric vehicles pose numerous challenges to engineers, including:
- System design - complex modeling, simulations and optimization are required to understand subsystem interactions and develop robust control strategies
- Power management - hybrid vehicles require new ways to control and monitor battery charging systems, power consumption and distribution, and thermal management.
- Battery technology - engineers are trying to develop batteries that are efficient, safe, environmentally friendly and cost-effective
- Operating conditions - hybrid components must withstand harsh conditions, such as moisture, dust, vibration and temperatures ranging from -40oC to 125oC.
- Reliability and robustness - hybrid components must perform equally as well or better than conventional internal combustion engines that boast 10-year, 100,000-mile warranties.
- Safety and security - hybrid components must be fault-tolerant and redundant to protect both passengers and emergency personnel in the event of an accident. For example, there must be a way to shut off the engine and disconnect high-voltage cables if an airbag is deployed.
The goal becomes addressing not only these issues, but doing so while still reducing harmful fuel and emissions levels and at the same time maintaining a high standard of driveability. This makes reliable vehicle control systems more necessary than ever before, and makes the need for advanced, flexible test and simulation solutions stronger than ever before.
The A&D Solution
A&D Technology provides complete turnkey solutions for HEV applications, including component testing, controls validation, and component performance simulation. These solutions shift component and vehicle integration, optimization and validation activities into an earlier phase of the development process.
Based on iTest, A&D's proven data acquisition and control system, iTestEV is a high-quality, flexible tool ideally suited for HEV powertrain testing. Advantages of utilizing iTest include:
- shorter development time
- more reliable product
- complete integrated test process from a single supplier
Finding an optimal operation strategy for an HEV is a very complicated process. iTestEV incorporates state-of-the-art modeling and rapid prototyping capability, providing a virtual reality for simulating the vehicle dynamics of advanced hybrid electric powertrains. The result is a lower number of prototype units (components, sub-systems or vehicles) required for test. Reducing the complexity and variation of the number of test units yields a direct benefit of development cost savings and resource reduction.
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