MEM 492

Senior Design Weekly Report

-- Winter 2016 -Long Haul Truck Cruise Control
for Fuel Optimization
Cheng Chen (cc3253@drexel.edu)
Lanziye He (lh523@drexel.edu)
Qi Jiang (qj28@drexel.edu)
Yuzhou Liu (yl648@drexel.edu)
Xindi Yin (xy57@drexel.edu)

Submission Date: Jan 20, 2016

Group: 11B

Advisor: Dr. Kwatny

Winter Weekly report 1&2

Weekly report 1
Winter Quarter Schedule
1. Devide the team into two groups, each team will in charge of transfering one
concept into actual controller.

2. Build control systems according to selected methods.

3. Test and analyze the advantages and disadvantages based on the results.
4. Rank each methods and target final selection.

Research on the imperfect Benchmark model

The benchmark model has two parts: a controller and a vehicle model. The controller
has the signals such as gear, fuel injection, variable geometry turbine, engine valve and brake.
And the sensor bus has the output signals like road slope, lambda(Air fuel ratio), clutch
position, vehicle velocity and distance. After the calculation, the outputs to the actuators are
gear request, fuel injection, engine gear ratio, and brake request.

Figure 1: Original Benchmark Controller

Shown in figure 1 above, there are two main control systems in the example
controller. One is the speed control and another one is gearbox control. In the gearbox
control, the control has a simple gear changing logic that based on the engine speed. When
the engine speed over the assigned value, the control is able to determine the number of
gears, usually 1 or 2 at a time, need to be shifted up. The gear request is sent to the
Transmission Control Unit TCU; After a request is sent it waits until the new gear is engaged
and the clutch released before a new gear change is allowed. The speed control is a very
simple P controller used to give the amount of fuel injected.
In the example controller, the brake in figure 2 below does not have a detailed control
to determine the performance and the road slope is not used to control other than plotting the
road altitude, which indicates two important tasks for the group to complete.

Figure 2: Vehicle Model Chassi graph [1]

Plan for winter quarter

As discussed in the last quarters research, two alternative approaches were generated.
The first approach is to work on the existed controller and make improvements on it. The
second approach is to add look ahead function in the benchmark model in order to minimize
the fuel consumption while still meeting the design constraints. In this quarter, the individual
test on engine, brake, clutch and gearbox models will be made in the Simulink program. By
comparing the original and improved benchamrk models, the efficiency of the new controller
can be determined. With the help from the document Using Simulink and Stateflow in
Automotive Applications [2] published by Mathworks Inc, the changes of configuretion in
controller can be done by stateflow. After the configuration, the optimal controller can be
reached.

Weekly report 2
Controller model comparsion
P controller
This type of control systems is designed using Proportional Control. As shown in
figure 3, the control system acts in a way that the control effort is proportional to the error.
The control effort is proportional to the error, and that's what makes it a proportional control
system.

Figure 3: General P control block diagram

Proportional controller helps in reducing the steady state error, thus makes the system
more stable. Also, slow response of the over damped system can be made faster with the help
of these controllers. However, Due to presence of these controllers we some offsets in the
system. Proportional controllers also increases the maximum overshoot of the system. The
speed control in the benchmark uses a simple proportional control.As shown in figure 4, the
original Kp value is 300. The velocity error is the difference between reference speed and
actual speed.

Figure 4: Matlab code of the speed control in the benchmark

PD controller
It is a combination of proportional and a derivative controller the output is equals to the
summation of proportional and derivative of the error signal. In this type of control system, D
mode is used when prediction of the error can improve control or when it is necessary to
stabilize the system. Often derivative is not taken from the error signal, but from the system
output variable. This is done to avoid effects of the sudden change of the reference input that
will cause sudden change in the value of error signal. Sudden change in error signal will
cause sudden change in control output. To avoid that it is suitable to design D mode to be
proportional to the change of the output variable.PD controller is often used in control of
moving objects. The general stucture is shown in figure 5.

Figure 5: General PD control block diagram

PI controller
PI controller will eliminate forced oscillations and steady state error resulting from
operation of on-off controller and P controller respectively. However, introducing an integral
mode has a negative effect on the speed of the response and overall stability of the system.
Thus, PI controller will not increase the speed of response. It can be expected since PI
controller does not have means to predict what will happen with the error in near future. This
problem can be solved by introducing a derivative mode, which has ability to predict what
will happen with the error in near future and thus to decrease a reaction time of the controller.
PI controllers are very often used in industry, especially when the speed of the response is not
an issue. The general block diagram is shown in figure 6. A control without D mode is used
when fast response of the system is not required and large disturbances and noise are present
during operation of the process.

Figure 6: General PI control block diagram

There are four different types of speed controllers that can be utilized in the designing.
The following table summerizes characteristics of each controller.

Table.1: Characters of different types of control

Smaller steady state error, i.e. better reference following

P control

Faster response
Smaller amplitude and phase margin
Stabilize effect on sudden changes in heading variable

PD control

Derivative is taken from from the system output variable

Fast response of the system is not required
Large disturbances and noise are present during operation of the process

PI control

There is only one energy storage in process

There are large transport delays in the system
Fast response (short rise time)
No oscillations and higher stability

PID control

Has the optimum control dynamics including zero steady state error
Can be used with higher order processes[3]

These four controlling mechanicsms will be applied individually into the existed
speed controller. And then the optimized speed controller will be used in both look-head and
real-time controllers to examine the controllers performance. The group is now at the stage
of researching on real industrial examples of each type of speed controller to prepare for the
truck cruise controller design.

Market research
The following tables represent the standards and testing data conducted by European
Union (EU)[4]. Due to the increased environmental awareness, the EU commision focus on
improving air quality by setting regulations for heavy duty truck industry. According to the
time sequence, the updatest regulation implemented is Euro VI, and a more strict Euro VII
standard will be excuted soon. According to these emission regulations, the aim is the
reduction of NOx and hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, regulations also focuse on the overall truck
efficiency including fuel economy.
Table 2: EU Emission Standards for Heavy-Duty Diesel Engines: Steady-State Testing

Table 3: EU Emission Standards for Heavy-Duty Diesel and Gas Engines: Transient Testing

Table 4: Emission Durability Periods

Table 5: EU Tractor-trailer Fuel Consumption Data

In the provided benchmark, the simulation running results showed that the fuel
consumption is 34.65 L/100 km (6.79 mpg) during the total travelling time of 5350.17
seconds (1.49 hrs). The primary goal is to reduce the fuel consumption based on the running
results and the EU regulations will be used as reference.

Reference
[1]Chen, Cheng, Lanziye He, Qi Jiang, Yuzhou Liu, and Xindi Yin. "Long Haul Truck Cruise
Control for Fuel Optimization." (n.d.): n. pag. Print.
[2] "Using Simulink and Stateflow in Automotive Applications." The MathWorks Inc. Web.
19 Jan. 2016. <http://www.ee.hacettepe.edu.tr/~solen/Matlab/MatLab/Matlab, Simulink Using Simulink and Stateflow in Automotive Applications.pdf>.
[3] TEMEL, Sena, Semih YALI, and Semih GREN. "DISCRETE TIME CONTROL
SYSTEMS." N.p., n.d. Web. <https://www.researchgate.net/file.PostFileLoader.html?
id=54685991d11b8bc9668b461a&assetKey=AS
%3A273635200176128%401442251123954>.

[4] "Heavy-Duty Truck and Bus Engines." Emission Standards: Europe. N.p., n.d. Web. 19
Jan. 2016.<https://www.dieselnet.com/standards/eu/hd.php>