Week-3 Challenge: ADVISOR Tool

Before going into the question let us give a brief introduction about the software ADVISOR Tool:

Introduction:

ADVISOR tool stands for an Advanced Vehicle Simulator Model which was developed by National Renewable Energy Laboratory in order to produce a platform for system-level analysis and trade-off studies of advanced vehicles. Due to the advantage of the software for possessing faster execution speed along with open programming environment of MATLAB, it is widely used for parametric studies to chalk out highly advanced vehicle with component best suited so as to design a highly economical vehicle. At the begining of 1996 five seperate vehicle configurations had been modeled including 3 lightweight vehicle with either series or parallal or conventional drivetrains and 2 other commercial vehicle with vehicle weights. The response and the results of each vehicle's fuel economy w.r.to critical vehicle parameters is analysed and regions of interest of the vehicles is then chalked out through parametric studies of the vehicles.

Advantage of using this Software:

• through parametric studies the fuel economy estimation of the vehicles can be easily made.
• can easily able to gather a detailed knowledge of how conventional, hybrid and electric vehicle utilise energy throughout their drivetrains.
• can easily compute the vehicle performance at various drive cycles so as to come up with an efficient fuel and emission management strategy.

Limitation of using this Software: 

• This software is used only for Steady State analysis of the vehicles and it is not suitable for Dynamic analysis of the vehicle performance.
• Mainly used for anaysis but not for design.

The models of the advisor are basically experimental data taken through drive test and then implemented in a Look-Up table format to create the entire setup in the Matlab Simulink. The major user of this software is Ford Motor Company, GM Corporation, Diamler Chrysler.

Question 1:

Solution:

After opening the Advisor Tool, firstly we have to load the EV_defaults_in file which will come as follows:

Here in the left side shows the Vehicle Model arrangement along with a graph contour showing the efficiency and the torque of a 75kW Induction Motor as an input taken form Westinghouse Company. And the right side shows the components of the vehicle used along with its specifications. The Block Diagram of such a vehicle arrangement is shown in the figure below:

Here the Model arrangement starts with the Drive Cycle and ends with the Energy Storage,this shows the Backward arrangement which constitutes the Steady State arrangement. Each of these block diagram used above are made up with the experimental set of data which is implemented using the Look-Up table relationship.

Now according to the question, we have to take the cargo mass as 500kg and then we have to check whether the vehicle can go upto 45km using an FTP drive cycle:

So for this, we have changes the Cargo Mass value to 500kg and kept other configuration as default which is shown in the figure below:

After changing the Cargo Mass to 500kg the overall mass get increased to 1508kg. Now, after that we chooses the FTP drive cycle as shown below:

Here we can see for a single FTP drive cycle the vehicle travels a distance of 17.77km. So for travelling a total of 45km distance we have to take 3 cycles of FTP as shown below:

After initialising all the parameters starting from the vehicle components upto the Drive Cycle arrangements, it is time to RUN the model and the respective output is coming as follows:

and the corresponding distance covered is:

From the above results we can see that the vehicle can cover a maximum distance of 41.4km and it can clearly be understand by looking at the SOC graph(which is highlighted) where we can see that the charge is falls to zero and so the vehicle can unable to move further. Therefore we can say that the EV vehicle with a FTP Drive cycle cannot able to travel the required distance of 45km due to the above scenario.

Question 2:

Solution:

By taking all the parameters and the scenario same as Question 1 except the Battery Capacity which is changed in two following step and the respective results are analysed as follows:

1) The no of modules of the battery is increased from 25 to 28:

After increasing the no of modules of the battery the corresponding Vnom and the Mass gets increases thereby increasing the total vehicle weight. Now runing the above arrangement with the same drive cycle we get the following results as follows:

and the corresponding distance covered is:

we can see that though the distance covered gets increased from 41.4km to 43.3km but still it is unable to reach the required distance of 45km as the SOC gets to zero before reaching the distance.

2) The no of modules of the battery is increased from 25 to 30:

Here also we can see that the total vehicle weight gets further increased from the previous value. Now runing the above arrangement with the same drive cycle we get the following results as follows:

and the corresponding distance covered is:

Therefore using the above battery arrangement of 30 module the vehicle can able to reach the required distance of 45km before the SOC gets decreased to zero but for that we have to compromise w.r.to the Total vehicle weight which will get increased to a great extent.

Question 3:

Solution:

In this question we have to select a file corresponding to Prius vehicle named as PRIUS_JPN_defaults_in. The vehicle as well as the vehicle components are shown in the figure below:

Here the left side shows the Vehicle model and the right side shows the vehicle component arrangements. The corresponding Block Diagram of the Prius vehicle is given below:

Now using this vehicle we have to perform the Gradeability Test by taking 3 cycles of FTP Drive Cycle. For that we have to enable the Graebility test option as shown below:

Here in the "Advanced Gradeability Test Option" we will be changing the Speed at every instant and correspondingly note the Gradeability w.r.to the Speed.

• The Speed is taken as 10mph or 16.1kmph for a duration of 10sec:

The Gradeability is coming as 30.3%.

• The Speed is taken as 30mph or 48.3kmph for duration of 10sec:

The Gradeability is coming as 14.7%.

• The Speed is taken as 50mph or 80.5kmph for a duration of 10sec:

The Gradeability is coming as 9.7%.

• The Speed is taken as 70mph or 112.7kmph for a duration of 10sec:

The Gradeability is coming as 6.3%.

• The Speed is taken as 90mph or 144.8kmph for a duration of 10sec:

The Gradeability is coming as 2.8%.

So, if we make a table of Speed at kmph and corresponding Gradeabiltity it will come as the following:

Thus from the above table we can conclude that as we increase the Speed the Gradeability will get reduced effectively.