A Performance and Thermal Simulation Code for Hybrid Electric Vehicle Design

The complex HEV power systems necessitates flexible and dynamic simulation software providing tools for evaluating, characterizing and optimizing these systems. Existing software have neglected to characterize significant component data such as heat loads, cabin cooling requirements, battery thermal management, and heat rejection. Vehicle performance (accounting for environmental conditions and speed), both wheeled and tracked propulsion, and management of packaging data (component volume and weight) have also been previously not accounted for. In order to efficiently and comprehensively model HEV systems with precision, the software model must be able to incorporate all of these characteristics while providing ease of user input, flexibility in making modifications, and easily understood graphical results. Each vehicle component would be represented by a modular graphics icon from the extensive data base of pre-defined vehicle components and selected by the user by a drag-and-drop method for any given model. Performance data for each component would include actual manufacturer specifications and corresponding icons would graphically indicate the required parameters/connections needed for proper operation of the system. The component database would be unrestricted in size and configuration, allowing the user the flexibility of manipulating unlimited vehicle component models with the capability to study any conceivable vehicle configuration with ease. BENEFITS: The code to be developed will be specifically geared to hybrid electric vehicle simulations. However, with only small modification it will be broadly applicable to modeling any type of a mixed mechanical and electromechanical systems accounting for the conservation of mass, momentum and energy. This tool can be applied to the analysis of many types of systems important to the DOD and to industry including, but not limited to: electric and hybrid electric vehicles, aircraft power, fuel and hydraulic Systems, satellite and spacecraft energy systems, refrigeration and air conditioning systems, power generation stations, and marine propulsion and power systems including submarine hybrid electric marine propulsion