New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

I.

INTRODUCTION

Hybrid and fully electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular as passenger
vehicles.For sustainable development by increasing the efficiency and reducing fuel
consumption in vehicles is the key.The major aim of this project is to utilize the fuel in a
better way by increasing the engine efficiency, thus reducing the consumption of
Non-renewable resources.Our HEV comprises of an IC engine, a motor which runs
on a battery, the battery is recharged with the help of an alternator which is coupled to a
turbine which runs on the exhaust from the IC engine. In this way the battery is being
recharged using the exhaust from the engine. This will result in increased efficiency and
reduced pollution. This will enhance the overall efficiency and power output of the HEV as
the vehicle will cover more distance with the same fuel and electricity consumption. This
unique combination makes the HEV different from other
Automobiles in terms of fuel consumption and pollution.
The second part of this paper deals with a qualitative comparison between different types of
electrical machine for hybrid electric vehicle traction applications.To keep hybrid electric
vehicles (HEV) competitive in cost and performance to their traditional internal combustion
engine (ICE) counterparts, the traction motor must have a high
efficiency across the speed range, a good power to weight ratio and be as low cost as
possible. To meet these requirements the US Department of Energy (DoE) is pushing research
in this area by setting the highly challenging Freedom Car 2020 targets for electrical
machines for this application. This paper will investigate a broader range of machine
topologies. While permanent magnet machines can meet most of the performance targets, a
big issue is the cost. Often, NdFeB magnets are used which add considerable cost, so
machines with reduced magnet mass or no magnets are of great interest. Thus, the aim of this
paper is to provide a comprehensive study comparing the various technologies and topologies
with the potential of achieving the DoE Freedom Car 2020 targets.

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

II.

WORKING OF HEV

The project comprises of a unique system in which the front wheel drive is handled by the IC
engine and the rear wheel drive is handled by the electric motor. The engine is a three
cylinder 4-stroke engine, the exhaust of this engine is the input to the turbine. The exhaust
gases propels the blades of the turbine. This turbine output is coupled with the armature of
the alternator using pulleys. The rear wheel is driven using the electrical motor which works
on the electrical power produced from the battery. When the vehicle starts the initial power is
given by the electric motor which is best suited in low speed conditions. When the speed is
increased beyond a desired range where the electric motor fails to supply efficient power, the
IC engine is started and the control of the vehicle shifts to the IC engine. When the speed
reduces below the desired range the engine keeps on running on its rated rpm whereas the
control shifts to the electric motor for slow speed driving. Also during high load conditions
the electric motor assists the IC engine to have a smoother drive without loss of additional
power. All the transitions between the motor drive to the engine drive is using a
microcontroller. This microcontroller is programmed in such a way that it gives the required
output for various speed and load conditions. In the design, the battery is recharged using the
alternator. The alternator has an input from a turbine which are coupled using belt/chain
drive. The turbine rotates with the help of the exhaust gases produced by the gasoline engine.
In this way the exhaust gases are utilized for the generation of electricity.

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

DESIGN LAYOUT

Front wheel drive controlled by IC engine.

Rear wheel drive by electric motor which draws power from battery.
The exhaust gas propels the blades of the turbine. This turbine output is coupled with
the armature of the alternator using pulleys.

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM

All the transitions between the motor drive to the engine drive is using a
microcontroller.

This microcontroller is programmed in such a way that it gives the required output for
various speed and load condition

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

III.

DESIGN

The plan is to fabricate a rectangular metallic frame on which Engine, Motor, Alternator, and
Turbine will be placed. All the electrical components will be enclosed in a casing so as to
protect them from overheating. IC Engine will be placed in front of the frame, the turbine will
be connected to the exhaust manifold of the engine. The turbine will be coupled to an
alternator shaft by Belt/Chain drives. Provision will be made for ammeter and voltmeter to
measure the current and voltage outputs of the alternator. The alternator will be connected to
batteries by wires. Motor will be powered by the batteries which will be placed at the rear end
of frame. There will be
measuring devices such as ammeters and voltmeters for measuring the input and output of the
motor and batteries and thus we can find out the various parameters pertaining to the motor.

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

TURBINE
We have used a turbocharger and separated the turbine assembly. Thus in our case only the
turbine of the turbo is used and the rest is discarded. So this acts as the turbine which will
give the input to the generator to produce electricity.

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

IV.

MACHINE TOPOLOGIES

This section describes the different technologies and topologies of machines which have been
considered in order to reach the Freedom Car targets. While, each type of machine has its
advantages and challenges when compared to other machines, the comparison is mainly
focused on determining which machine topologies would be able to meet both the peak
torque and high speed requirements of the Freedom Car targets.

Interior Permenant Magnet (IPM) Machine

The IPM machine operates on the same principle as the SPM but has the PMs buried under
the surface of the rotor. This gives almost as good power and magnet alignment torque
density as the SPM [5] and alsoimproves rotor robustness, even at higher speeds, due to the
PMs being buried under the rotor steel. The interior magnets also add reluctance torque which
helps improve torque density and high speed performance. Although this reluctance value is
small compared to some of the other topologies .The drawbacks are the requirement for
expensive PMsand while it can reach higher speeds than the SMPM machine, the
performance (in terms of efficiency and torque) is not optimal at these higher speeds. This
machine is then current industry standard for automotive traction, as it has high torque
density and moderate high speed capabilities. IPMs are used in many current hybrid vehicle
applications, such as many of the Toyota Prius models [8, 11] and Cummins
Generator Technologies current hybrid traction machine [12]. Due to the torque density and
moderate speed range of the IPM design, they have been heavily investigated for these
targets. The first key example of this is theGeneral Electric machine [2], which uses radial
spoke PMs inset in the rotor. This machine uses a 12 slot 10 pole configuration and meets the
majority of the targets, failing on efficiency (92.7%) at maximum speed, although it is not
declared what the key loss contributor is here, and it is likely to fail on the cost, as large
NdFeB PMs are used [2]. Another example is the V shape IPMs in [13], these designs
perform slightly worse than the radial spoke machine, the best dropping below the 95%
efficiency target at 10000 rpm and exceeding the back EMF limit [13]. However the V shape
design did use smaller magnets , so while a cost analysis was not shown for either,

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

the V shape designs would come closer to this challenging cost target, but both are unlikely to
meet the cost requirements.

Fig: Cross-sectional view of a segmented prototype IPM machine.

Fig : Rotor laminations of normal rotor (a) and bench mark rotor (b)

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

Induction Machines (IM)

IMs use the principles of electromagnetic induction to generate a field flux from electrically
conductive rotor v bars. This keeps one of the benefits of PM machines, i.e. that only the
stator needs to be supplied with current. They are cheap, reliable and rugged and have a good
enough performance to produce traction adequately [14]. One notable advantage of IMs is
that the rotor flux can be regulated through field orientated control [15]. This makes them
quite competitive against PM machines in the high speed region. Current flowing in the rotor
causes some of the disadvantages, such as high losses and rotor cooling complexity [16].
While IMs are comparable to PM motors at high speed, it is unlikely the same design would
be able to meet the peak torque requirement with the current and temperature limits.
IMs have been previously considered but not implemented for the FreedomCar targets. IMs
are commonly seen in hybrid and fully electric vehicle applications from the Tesla Roadster
[17] to heavy duty vehicles with high torque, low speed and high volume such as BAE
HybriDrive propulsion system and the IMs used by Azure Dynamics for hybrid traction.

Synchronous Reluctance (SynRel) Machines

SynRel Machines are a hybrid between the SR machine and the synchronous machine. This
machine only produces reluctance torque, based on the saliency of the machine. The rotor is
made of laminated steel, with flux barriers placed within the rotor, seen in Figure 2, to create
a difference in the reluctances of then d and q axis.
Due to the lack of PMs or windings the rotor of a SynRel has the benefits of the SR rotor, in
that it is cheap and robust and if designed correctly can go to high speeds [22].
While an acceptable level of torque density can be achieved [22, 23] (considering that it
includes no PMs), its performance cannot be compared to that of a PM machine and thus it is
improbable that the requirements of the peak and rated torque of the application at hand will
be reached. An added complexity of SynRel machines is the required small air-gap, in order
to maintain the require performance, making constructing and maintaining this air gap more
difficult than PM machines. Other challenges with these machines include the torque ripple
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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

and the power factor. These can be mitigated but are still generally worse than an IPM
machine [10]. PMs can be added to create a PM-assisted synchronous reluctance machine
(PMa-SynRel). Thisincreases the torque density of the machine, but also increases the cost
and high speed mechanical issues [24]. Compared to an IPM, this results in increased
reluctance torque, which can be used to reduce supply current or magnet mass requirements
for a fixed torque requirement [25]. The SynRel, particularly with PM assistance, has been
suggested for HEV and EV applications. A common approach is to use the space within the
barriers, by implementing ferrite PMs instead of rare earth. It can be seen in [26], which
shows that for similar targets to that of the FreedomCar, that this machine can maintain high
efficiencies at high speeds. However when using large quantities of ferrite PMs at high speed
the mechanical issues of these machine become even more critical due to the centrifugal
forces [10].

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

v.

Comparison Of The Topologies

In order to identify the most suited machine technology and topology, relative qualitative
indices (QI) were set and applied to each technology, relative to the authors literature review
presented above. Table 2 gives the QI of the manufacturability of the machines for this
specific application and tabulates these indices by setting a score sheet (with 10 being the
maximum) for the 6 key factors that define the production and manufacturing of the machine,
along with a summed total. When assigning the QI values, a higher value is always superior
i.e. even for volume and mass, a high value refers to a smaller machine (or a higher
power/torque density). Some of the machine topologies here cover a small range, such as the
FS referring to both PMFS and WFFS, in this case an average value between the two types of
FS were used. A weighting system has been incorporated to the total to represent which
factors are more critical to the comparison. Cost was seen as the most critical QI, and was
therefore was given a weighting of 3. Volume and mass were the next most important, as
keeping these low is crucial in HEV applications, and so their weighting is 2. The other three
QIs were given a valueof 1, as they are still significant, but not as much as cost, volume and
mass.

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From Table 2 it is clear that the best performance is achieved by the IPM machine, closely
followed by the SMPM technology. The double stator and the alternative flux direction
machines also perform well but these usually having significant draw backs, such as design
complexity, cost and poor scalability, which imply the general superiority of the IPM
configuration. The IM has a high total but to meet the same torque as an IPM machine, it
would require a higher volume. Table 3 briefly compares the performance of the machines
including the potential to reach the peak torque, and the width of the speed range that high
efficiency could be maintained for. It is important to note that these measures are a result of
published literature.
The alternative flux direction and DS machines have been removed. This is because they
would perform similar to the machines they are based on, but with a lack of scalability and
thermal issues respectively which are large disadvantages.

From Table 3 it can be observed how the SMPM and IPM technologies can achieve the better
torque density performances, but do not perform as well in the field weakening ranges. As
can be expected, the SR machine has a low torque density but very high speed capabilities.
The rest of the technologies give varying results between these two extremes with some
positives and negatives, when considered for the application at hand.

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VI.

Optimal Machine Topology

As expected the IPM machine is the best choice to use for the FreedomCar 2020 targets. It is
likely that adding some reluctance to the design , i.e. moving towards a PMa-SynRel
topology, will help meet the high speed performance requirements. If the speed range was
wider or removal of PMs was a higher priority (such as in similar targets for further in the
future) IMs and SR machines will be the more promising candidates.

VII. MACHINE DESIGN

Considering all the above, it was decide d to design an IPM machine and a relative PMaSynRel counterpart in order to try and achieve the FreedomCar targets.

Figure :a) Flat magnet IPM machine (concentrated wound). b) Flat magnet IPM machine
(distributed wound). c)PMa-SynRel Machine

After an IPM was shown to be the optimal starting topology a trade-off study between
concentrated and distributed wound designs and slot and pole number for each was
completed. Optimal concentrated wound (12 slot, 10 pole) and distributed woun d (30 slot, 10
pole) combinations were found.
After this a PMa-SynRel machine was designed to compare to the IPM desig n, in order to try
to improve the high speed efficiency.

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It wa s found that the IPM requires lower current to meet the peak torque, while the PMaSynRel design requires lower current and has a higher efficiency at maximum speed. The
current density values for the peak torque are 14.86 A/mm 2 for the IPM and 22.01 A/mm2 for
the PMa-SynRel. For the max speed operating poin t the current density is 6.95 A/mm 2 in the
IPM and 4.5 A/mm2 in the PMa-SynRel.

Fig :Comparison of torque vs RMS Current

\
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Figure 12a) Key losses of both machines across the speed range at rated power. b) Efficiency
of both machines across the speed range at rated power

From Figure 12a it can be seen that at high speed the PMa-SynRel design has much lower
losses (both copper and iron) than the IPM machine. At low speed, while the iron losses ar e
similar between the two designs, the copper losses are much higher in the PMa-SynRel
design. The reasoning behind these results will be discussed further in a planned future
publication, but the efficiency this results in is given in Figure 12b. As can be expected from
the losses, the PMa-SynRel has a higher efficiency than the IPM at high speed, but much
lesser at low speed.From all the above, it can be safely concluded that if the efficiency of the
high speed operating point is the most important aspect of the machine the PMa-SynRel
machine is optimal. While if the critical point is the peak torque performance then the IPM is
a better candidate.

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

VIII. CONCLUSION
This HEV is supposed to use a totally different type of a system of recharging the battery
which uses a turbine to run the alternator (generator) which recharges the battery with the
exhaust of the IC Engine when its running. The rate of charging of the battery will depend
upon the speed at which the engine is running (i.e. RPM of the engine). This type of system
is not available in the present Hybrid Vehicles and is an innovation which focuses on using
the waste exhaust gases as a source for generation of electricity. This HEV focuses on saving
energy and optimizing the fuel consumptions by various incorporated methods. Also the fact
that this HEV is cost effective when running on lower speeds as it is the case when vehicle is
running in traffic conditions, majority of fuel consumption is reduced with increase in
overall efficiency of the vehicle.
In this paper, a set of machines have been compared against each other, in reference to their
potential to meet the FreedomCar 2020 targets.Each machine was considered independently
for the targets and then compared against the other machines. The comparisons were focused
upon ability to meet the high torque density and wide speed range required of the targets,
along with appropriate QI such as scalability and expected life. The IPM has been shown to
be the optimal machine topology for these targets due to its high torque density and
moderate high speed performance.Finally, two designs (an IPM and a PMa-SynRel) were
briefly compared for these targets. Showing that the better machine depends on which speed
values of the range are more critical.

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New Trends In Hybrid Vehicles

IX.

REFERENCE

1. W. Wang and B. Fahimi, "Comparative study of electric drives for EV/HEV

propulsion system," in Electrical Systems forAircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion
(ESARS), 2012, 2012,
2. K. Nakamura, K. Murota, and O. Ichinokura, "Characteristics of
3. novel switched reluctance motor having permanent magnets between the stator poletips," in Power Electronics andApplications, 2007 European Conference on, 2007, pp.
1-5.
4. Resources magazine publication. Replacing Oil: Alternative Fuels and Technologies.
5. M. J. Riezenman, Electric vehicles, IEEE Spectrum, pp. 18101, Nov.1992.
6. H. Shimizu, J. Harada, C. Bland, K. Kawakami, and C. Lam, Advanced concepts in
electric vehicle design, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 44, pp. 1418, Oct. 1997.
7. C. D. S. Tuck, Ed., Modern Battery Technology. Harwood, p. 411, 1991.
8. R. Prabhakar, S. J. Citron, and R. E. Goodson.Optimization of Automobile Engine
Fuel Economy and Emissions. ASME Paper 75-WAlAut-19, Dec. 1975.

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