Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
1. Introduction
This project aims to model and simulate the performance of an automobile with some
arrangements to particular throttle setting, gear selection and external factor (hilly road)
base on the chosen automobile factory specification. The simulation of the model is used to
predict the operation of the car in terms of speed, acceleration, and distance.
Since there were many forces influence the real automobile system, it is very complex
to be modeled, this model only accommodates air force resistance, mass inertia, and hill
force (uphill or downhill) in the simulation. This model also assumes that:
- Engine speed and road speed are proportional (depends on the gears ratio).
- Torque curve cover the full range of engine speed, set the torque from zero to 1000
rpm to flat and make the torque down to zero at maximum engine speed + 100 rpm.
- Throttle control gives a fixed percentage of the maximum torque at the particular
engine speed.
2. Automobile Data
The car that has been chosen is BMW 550i automatic transmission. Some
1
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
2.2. Transmission
This car is equipped with 6 gear automatic transmission. The gear ratio for each
Other parameters that will be used in this Simulink® model for BMW 550i are
shown in table 2.
2
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
3. Model Description
The first step to build this model, we need to find all the force that influence to the
model. In this model, we need to find the equations of hill force, air (drag) resistance
• Mass inertia force (force due to amount of resistance to the velocity change)
Fm = - m.a
• Air resistance force (force due to air friction) (equation 2). The equation for this
force is:
Fd = - ½.Cd.A.ρ.v2
• Hill Force (force due to road slope) (equation 3). The equation for this force is
Fw = T.Gr.FDr / rw
3
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
The sum of these four forces produce net force that will make the automobile
accelerate (move), thus the equation for the acceleration (equation 6) is:
a = v’ = (Fw + Fm + Fd + Fh) / m
v = ∫ a dt = v0 + a.t
Where: D = displacement
And the equation to calculate the engine speed as function of car speed is:
The Simulink® model for the BMW 550i automatic transmission for this project is
4
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
Basically, the Basic Simulink® model for BMW 550i is constructed from 7 subsystems,
which are:
1. Gear subsystem.
2. Tire subsystem.
5
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
3. Gear selection.
This subsystem
This subsystem
6
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
7. Main process.
This Basic Simulink® model is used to model some of simulations in the full throttle
setting with fixed gear selection. To simulate using throttle percentage between 0 – 100%
to maintain the car speed at the desired value, the throttle percentage value in the throttle
4. Simulations
First thing to do before we do the simulations is input all the parameter as stated in
the table 1 and table 2 to the Simulink® model. We also have to input the torque curve
into the model. In this model, we use look-up table to input the torque curve as function
7
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
For the optimal gear changes simulation, i must perform gear changes
automatically. To do this, I use look-up table to decide when the gear change as
function of car speed. This look-up table value is shown in the table 4.
The result from the simulation for some simulation is shown in the table 5.
8
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
All of the graph for the result that presented in the table 5 could be found in the
report appendix.
The results from the simulations show that there are some differences compared
with the factory specification data. These are the list of the differences:
1. Top speed.
The result from simulation gets bigger value (292.8 km/h compared with 250
km/h) than the factory specification. It is happen might be because the factory
test use different types of force that influence the result also this simulation did
not count for several other factors like: transmission lost, clutch slip, wheel slip,
etc.
The simulation gets lower result compared with the specification data. It could
be caused by the gear change point is incorrect (the factory setting have better
9
ELEC7006-Car modelling Susilo Wibowo (41121216)
gear change point) also because in this simulation did not count for the torque
higher the redline (the torque curve did not show the data).
The simulations found that the hill force (road slope) more significant compared
with other external forces specially for the overdrive gear (gear that have less than 1 gear
ratio) since it will reduce the top speed but for the lower gear, the top speed unchanged
Optimal gear change could be found by plotting the torque versus speed graph for
all the gear ratio in the same graph. Then in the graph will show the crossing point for all
the gear ratio. This crossing point is the best candidate for the optimal gear change.
This model could be improved later so it will perform better and more real by
adding some algorithm/subsystem that could decide the up or down gear change as
6. Reference
1. Dabney, James B. and Harman, Thomas L., Mastering Simulink, Pearson Education
Inc., 2004
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear_ratio
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_equation
4. http://www.rri.se/popup/performancegraphs.php?ChartsID=623
10