Type of Award: STTR Phase I and Phase II with Funded Enhancement Subcontractors: Purdue Contract Numbers: M67004-99-C-0044 and M67854-00-C-3047 Agency: U.S. Marine Corp Status: Completed Periods: 7/13/99 to 6/13/00 and 5/23/00 to 8/31/03 Principal Investigator: E. A. Walters Abstract: The primary objective of the Phase I effort was to determine the feasibility of a heterogeneous modeling environment for the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV). This has been clearly established. In particular, a method of connecting any number of independent time-domain simulations has been developed and used to demonstrate a detailed heterogeneous computer simulation of the salient components of the AAAV electric power system. The primary objective of the Phase II effort is to establish a flexible and powerful distributed modeling and analysis environment for the AAAV electrical power system that can be used to evaluate design alternatives, predict performance characteristics during normal and abnormal (e.g. battle damage) conditions, and serve as a simulation testbed for future design modifications. This facility will reduce engineering and development costs, identify optimum design choices, and avoid unanticipated problems during development and fielding of the AAAV, thereby increasing affordability over its life cycle. Specific tasks to be performed include: the development and validation of a detailed heterogeneous end-to-end simulation of the AAAV electric power system, the development of a multi-level visualization and control interface, the investigation of high-speed computational clusters to improve the computational speed, and the investigation of multi- and parallel rate integration...
Read MoreVirtual Prototyping Vehicle Electrical System Management Design Tool
Type of Awards: SBIR Phase I and Phase II Subcontractors: Purdue Contract Numbers: W56HZV-04-C-0126 and W56HZV-04-C-0713 Agency: U.S. Army Tank Command Status: Completed Periods: 3/2/04 to 9/2/04 and 11/4/04 to 5/4/07 Principal Investigator: C. E. Lucas Abstract: Complex engineered systems such as the power systems of tactical vehicles and advanced weapon systems involve a broad spectrum of technologies and interactive subsystems that must work synergistically. Due to the interdependencies between subsystems and he ever present re-design process, it is becoming increasingly important to establish a flexible virtual prototyping design and analysis infrastructure that facilitates the investigation of interactions between subsystems and promotes the collaboration between individual groups and organizations involved in the design, analysis, and/or development of complex “systems of systems.” Moreover, this type of simulation infrastructure would provide system integrators and program managers with a rapid and easy-to-use means of establishing proof-of-concept for new systems, evaluating competitive system configurations or architectures at a system level and, after the candidate architecture is selected and a more detailed design phase is entered, tracking and managing the progress of the detailed system design. Such an infrastructure could also be useful throughout the life cycle of a military platform for analyzing potential field problems, evaluating technology enhancements/retrofits, and/or personnel training. The proof-of-concept and viability of such a capability were established in Phase I. The Phase II research will be focused upon the next steps in the development of this virtual prototyping vehicle electrical system management design...
Read MoreAutomated Evolutionary Design of a Hybrid-Electric Vehicle Power System Using Distributed Heterogeneous Optimization
Dionysios C. Aliprantis, O. Wasynczuk, Purdue University; N. Wu and C. E. Lucas, PC Krause and Associates, Inc; M. Abul Masrur, U.S. Army RDECOM-TARDEC The optimal design of hybrid-electric vehicle power systems poses a challenge to the system analyst, who is presented with a host of parameters to fine-tune, along with stringent performance criteria and multiple design objectives to meet. Herein, a methodology is presented to transform such a design task into a constrained multi-objective optimization problem, which is solved using a distributed evolutionary algorithm. A power system model representative of a series hybrid-electric vehicle is considered as a paradigm to support the illustration of the proposed methodology, with particular emphasis on the power system’s time-domain performance. 2006 SAE Power Systems Conference, November 7–9, 2006, New Orleans, LA. Paper #...
Read MoreDistributed Heterogeneous Simulation of a Hybrid-Electric Vehicle Drive System Using the Simplorer Software Product
N. Wu, C. E. Lucas, Curtis Rands, I. E. Simpson, PC Krause and Associates, Inc; Dionysios C. Aliprantis, Purdue University; M. Abul Masrur; U.S. Army RDECOM-TARDEC To support research and analysis requirements in the development of future hybrid-electric drive systems, a flexible and efficient means of predicting the dynamic performance of large-scale multi-disciplinary systems prior to hardware trials is crucial. With the development of Distributed Heterogeneous Simulation (DHS), the technology now exists to enable this type of investigation. Previously, DHS was shown to allow the interconnection of component simulations running on a single computer or networked computers and developed using any combination of a variety of commercial-off-the-shelf software packages. The US Army is interested in using the Simplorer software product from Ansoft Corporation to model various subsystems that are incorporated with such vehicle system simulations. In this paper, the DHS technique is expanded to support the Simplorer software package; thus, allowing subsystem models developed using this tool to be interconnected to form a dynamic system simulation. A representative hybrid-electric vehicle has been selected as a study system and includes propulsion, generation, weapon, and payload subsystems. Models of the components/subsystems that comprise the power system have each been developed in MATLAB/Simulink or Simplorer. Utilizing the system simulation, studies have been performed to illustrate the dynamic interactions between the subsystems when simulated on a computer network containing Windows based personal computers. 2006 SAE Power Systems Conference, November 7–9, 2006, New Orleans, LA. Paper #...
Read More