Date: Tuesday, June 1st, 2021 | 4 - 5 p.m.         Watch Video  

WBG powered Drivetrain for dual in-wheel Motors

This webinar gives insight into a vehicle demonstrator, having a flexible and modular e-traction axle system, which is the combination of in-wheel motors and a SiC based dual inverter. Thereby three main topics are discussed: The design and development of a telematics control unit that allows remote wireless access to the data available on the CAN bus by means of 3G/4G connectivity. Secondly, the in-wheel electrified powertrain concept with dual inverters and thirdly, torque vectoring control for in-wheel drive vehicles.

1. Remote evaluation of automotive parts based on the CAN bus is always a complex task. When dealing with systems involving parts from different developers, manufacturers, and integrators, powerful tools that provide remote access to the data available on the CAN bus are highly recommended. In addition, collecting large volumes of sensor data from the CAN bus and uploading them in real-time to the cloud enables high-level smart processing tasks, for example, to provide early warning of a breakdown, thus reducing vehicle maintenance costs and improving customer satisfaction. To address all these challenges, we have designed and developed a telematics control unit that allows remote wireless access to the data available on the CAN bus by means of 3G/4G connectivity. The data is filtered according to a remotely configurable filter and uploaded to the cloud, where it is stored in an efficient time-series database. The system is completed with a dashboard with a web interface that allows the user to interact with all the data in the form of dynamic graphs. 
   
   
2. A flexible and modular e-traction axle system, which is the combination of in-wheel motors and Dual Inverter, will be presented. The in-wheel motor technology is continuously gaining momentum in the automotive domain and offers some distinctive features such as performance, simplification of the powertrain and transmission layout, weight distribution along the vehicle, system costs. HiPERFORM Dual Inverter introduces a family concept, featuring a modular and scalable architecture based on advanced multi-core automotive microcontrollers and power devices, including wide-bandgap (WBG) technologies for high-end and high-power implementations. 
   
   
3. The third part will present a torque vectoring controller that improves vehicle yaw stability by using active torque distribution in the rear axle. Firstly, the torque control strategy of the rear-axle motors of the JAC vehicle is presented. Then the torque vectoring controller is described together with the vehicle lateral dynamics, sideslip angle estimator and torque allocation method. Numerical simulations of the vehicle for different scenarios and road profiles show the improvement of vehicle stability when torque vectoring is into action. The procedure for C code generation and deployment of the torque vectoring controller into an Electronic Control Unit (ECU) is presented. The work ends with the description of the test results obtained by a test campaign carried out on a dedicated test rig developed by the partner ENCOPIM within the HiPERFORM project. The test campaign is devoted to calibrate the motor control and validate by hardware in the loop testing the torque vectoring control strategy.

Speakers:

José A. García-Naya (Senior Member, IEEE) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer engineering from the University of A Coruña (UDC), Spain, in 2005 and 2011, respectively. He is currently with the Group of Electronics Technology and Communications, UDC, where he is also an Associate Professor, and with the CITIC Research Center. He is the coauthor of more than 120 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conferences. He is also a member of the research team in more than 40 research projects funded by public organizations and private companies, assuming the role of principal researcher in two of them. His research interests include indoor location systems, time-modulated arrays, high-mobility transportation systems, and IoT.

Claudio Romano took his MSc in Electronic Engineering at the Politecnico of Torino (Turin, Italy) in 2007. He worked at CRF (Turin, Italy), being involved in the first release of F1 K.E.R.S power inverter design. Then he spent several years in the field of alternative fuels systems, becoming the responsible for LPG/CNG Engine Control Unit at Metatron (Bologna, Italy). He reached Ideas & Motion S.r.l in 2015 and he is still working there as a system engineer. He leads several advanced research projects mainly in the field of traction power inverters.

Nicola Amati is Professor of Driver Assistance System Design and Dynamic Design of Machines at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino. He is also Vice Director of the Center of Automotive Research and Sustainable Mobility at Politecnico di Torino. His research activities are in the field of Mechatronic System for Automotive both on powertrain and Chassis. He is the author of 53 Journal papers, 97 Conference papers, 3 book chapters, and 15 patents.

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