Vehicle Technology 20-21: Coursework
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Vehicle Technology 20-21: Coursework
Vehicle Technology (H7109)
Coursework1 – Simulate the Dynamics of and Design Controllers for Vehicles
Requirements: You will work on the coursework as a team of two set up by yourselves. There is a list of groups in the Canvas page of the module where you will enlist your names as a team. The coursework report, which should be approximately 2500-3000 words along with graphs and pictures, must be entirely your own work, although you may work with fellow students to discuss topics, solutions and compare results. Your work will also contain SIMULINK models and MATLAB codes which will be submitted online by each teammate separately through Canvas. This coursework is worth 40% of the Module marks.
The coursework consists of three sections:
Research: You need to conduct TWO pieces of research by providing a short report of up to 500 words per each addressing the requested topics.
Design and Development: You need to manipulate and use SIMULINK models and develop MATLAB codes to achieve the project objectives. The results will be presented and analysed with up to 1500 words in your report and the developed materials will also be submitted as supporting documents.
Reflective report: Your report will also contain a short section of around 300 words reflecting your learning curve throughout the coursework and how you would improve it if you would do it again.
Ref. |
Item |
Comments |
Mark Breakdown (out of 100) |
C1 |
Research |
Clear and straightforward answers are provided to address the research questions. Brief technical introductions to the operational functionality involved sensors and technologies and functional diagrams are provided. Illustrative figures and tables are provided. |
25 |
C2 |
Development (Project 1 and Project 2) |
The design criteria are met. The developed codes and models are fully operational, and the results are valid. The results are represented and compared clearly using figures and tables. Brief but clear analysis of the results is provided. |
60 (C2-P1:30, C2-P2:30) |
C3 |
Reflective Report |
You will clearly describe your learnt lessons from the coursework. Also, you will explain your most challenging and useful activities. |
10 |
C4 |
MATLAB/SIMULINK files |
All developed MATLAB codes and SIMULINK models will be submitted and evaluated. |
5 |
Mark Allocation Guideline
0-39 |
40-49 |
50-59 |
60-69 |
70+ |
80+ |
Work mainly |
Most elements |
Most elements are strong, minor weaknesses |
Strengths in all elements |
Most work |
All work |
C1: Research (up to 500 words per each research; worth 25% of the coursework mark)
You will conduct TWO micro-researches to address the following topics of A and B.
A. Modern vehicles are equipped with advanced heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems that automatically control the temperature, CO2 and relative humidity of passengers’ cabin of cars. The modern HVAC systems take the engine operating points into account and use feedback to adjust themselves and reduce their effects on the vehicle fuel and emission efficiencies.
You will conduct a small research on the modern HVAC systems to particularly address the following topics:
Main components of a modern HVAC system;
Thermodynamics principles of modern HVAC systems;
Dependency of the temperature and mass flow rate of the HVAC refrigerant on the engine speed;
Control principles of the modern HVAC systems.
[15 Marks]
B. Modern vehicles are equipped with advanced control systems called electronics stability program (ESP) and traction controller (TC) that overwrite drivers’ inputs of acceleration, deceleration and steering to prevent, respectively, over- and under- steering and over-spinning situations.
You will conduct a small research on ESP and TC controllers including (but not limited to):
Describing in fully technical terms, along with figures and tables, the main problems that ESP and TC controllers are developed to overcome;
Control strategies of modern ESPs and TCs including operation principles, in- used sensors and actuators and control algorithms.
[10 Marks]
END OF C1 |
C2: Design and Development (up to 1500 words; worth 60% of the coursework mark)
You will solve two separate design projects and report the results of the BOTH projects. All developed MATLAB and SIMULINK models will be submitted through Canvas.
1 Project C2-P1 (worth 30% of coursework mark)
Introduction
In this project, you will use an available example model of HVAC and vehicle models to simulate the thermodynamics of HVAC system and passenger cabin of cars along with a corresponding controller. The example is available online and you can download by typing ‘ssc_vehicle_hvac’ in the command window of MATLAB. Figure 1 illustrates the top-level design of the simulation environment.
Figure 1 The top-level simulation example of a thermodynamics model of passenger cabins of cars with the manual controller provided by MATLAB/SIMULINK
The simulation example can be simply run for any control strategy and all required variables can be extracted. Moreover, parameters of thermodynamics of passenger cabin of cars can be changed. Therefore, the developed simulation environment provides a testbed for testing new developed controllers.
Modern HVAC systems include air filter and cleaning elements along with traditional heating and cooling functionalities. HVACs control the temperature, as well as CO2 and relative humidity (RH) levels of the passenger cabins of modern cars. Moreover, the systems are equipped with sophisticated control strategies which take the engine operating points into account to minimise the effects of the HVAC operation on fuel and emission efficiencies of cars.
Aim of the Project
You are a technical specialist for HVAC Solutions Corporation which designs and manufactures customised HVAC systems for specialist applications and sells these bespoke HVACs for many types of vehicles.
Your line manager has provided you with requirements on CO2 and RH levels and a simulation
environment of the target car and HVAC in SIMULINK.
Your task is to develop a controller for the given HVAC system and car with comparatively better performance comparing to the original manual one.
Project Objectives
Each group of two students are given by a unique set of environment and vehicle
1 Investigate the provided simulation environment and provide a report including explanations of the components and operation principles of the model.
[8 Marks]
2 Update the example model with your given parameters in VT_2020_Coursework.xlsx. You need to explore the model and find the locations of each parameter before changing them. The process of changing the parameters will be briefly described in the report.
[5 Marks]
3 Design a controller for automatically control the following inputs of the system:
a. ‘air flow rate’;
b. ‘blend door signal’;
c. ‘AC loop on/off’;
d. ‘flap door signal’.
to as fast as possible regulate temperature, as well as RH and CO2 levels of the passenger cabin to the values given as per group in VT_2020_Coursework.xlsx while keeping the CO2 and RH levels within the range of, respectively, [850ppm, 1200ppm] and [50%-60%].
[7 Marks]
4 Replace the original manual controller of HVAC with an automatic controller and provide simulated graphs indicating the performance criteria of your controller comparing with the ones from the original manual controller. Suggestion: it can be done by overlapping the psychrometric and condensation charts of two controllers however, it could be done by any other plots as well. The speed of the design controller can also be evaluated by plotting overlapped step responses ofboth controllers.
[10 Marks]
END OF PROJECT C2_P1 |
2 Project C2-P2 (worth 30% of coursework mark)
Introduction
In this project, you will use a vehicle dynamics simulation model available in Canvas as IncreasingSteer1.zip. The model runs on MATLAB/SIMULINK. Figure 1 illustrates the top- level design of the model which you will use to simulate the behavior of a vehicle in response to the driver inputs.
Figure 1 The top-level simulation model of vehicle dynamics runnable on
MATLAB/SIMULINK
The simulation example can be simply run for any acceleration, deceleration and steering commands, as well as any control strategy, and all required variables can be extracted. Moreover, parameters of vehicles can be changed. Therefore, the developed simulation environment provides a test bed for testing new developed controllers or for simulating the behavior of a real car.
Aim of the Project
You are a technical specialist for Vehicle Tech Corporation which consults car manufacturers by providing pre-manufacturing analysis of designs and tuning parameters.
Your line manager has provided you with a simulation model in SIMULINK of a car that one of your customers is going to manufacture.
Your task is to provide a technical report on performance of the car by investigating its dynamics and provide informative graphs and analysis. Also, you will add a simple controller to the model to measure the minimum radius of the curvature your car can achieve at different speeds.
Project Objectives
You will:
1 Extract the following parameters from the car model:
Distances of the front and rear axles from the centre of gravity of the car;
Wheel base of the vehicle;
Maximum rotational angle of steering hand wheel;
Mass of the vehicle.
[5 Marks]
2 Design simulation scenarios and modify the inputs of the model accordingly to extract the following characteristic curves of the vehicle at longitudinal speed of 30 mph:
a. Wheel steering angles in terms of lateral accelerations;
b. Wheel slip angles in terms of lateral accelerations;
and analyze the vehicle cornering performance by explaining the curves and measuring the under-steer gradient (by develop MATLAB codes or manual calculation).
[10 Marks]
3 Design simulation scenarios and modify the inputs of the model accordingly to measure cornering stiffness values of the front and rear tyres (which is at slip angles less than or equal 2 degrees). Then calculate manually the under-steer gradient of vehicle and compare it with the calculated value from above objective 2;
[10 Marks]
4 Design a combination of feed-forward and feed-back controllers and add them to the model to enforce the vehicle to rotate with a given radius of curvature at longitudinal speed of 20 mph. Then use the modified model to plot a graph of the minimum radius of curvature in terms of different longitudinal speeds within the range of 10 to 70 mph.
[5 Marks]
END OF PROJECT C2_P2 |
C3: Reflective Report (300 words; worth 10% of the coursework1 mark)
In 300 words, describe:
What were some of the most interesting discoveries I made while working on this project? About the problem? About myself? About others?
What were some of my most challenging moments and what made them so?
What were some of my most powerful learning moments and what made them so?
What is the most important thing I learned personally?
When did I realize that I had come up with my final best solution?
How do I feel the project relates to real-world situations and problems?
Were my milestones and goals mostly met, and how much did I deviate from them if any?
What did I learn were my greatest strengths? My biggest areas for improvement?
What would I do differently if I were to approach the same problem again?
What’s the one thing about myself above all others I would like to work to improve?
END OF C3 |
2022-03-21