Holistic Simulation Tool for the Commercial Vehicle Powertrain Development

In the near future, the commercial vehicle sector will be faced with more stringent emission and greenhouse gas (CO2) standards as well as high customer requirements regarding total cost of ownership. These challenges can be met with different approaches and technologies, for example by incorporating Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) system applications. A WHR system makes use of the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) to recover part of the wasted exergies, which is particularly interesting for heavy duty vehicles operating most of their time at high loads and constant speeds. Other vehicle types can benefit from hybrid powertrain approaches. This highlights that a detailed pre-analysis, based on computational simulation, of the systemic boundary conditions is a prerequisite for the specific concept decision and integration of such an application. Within this paper, an integrated simulation model will be presented, which is-in the field of commercial vehicle and powertrain development - a part of the holistic research approach pursued by the FEV Europe GmbH and the Institute for Combustion Engines of the RWTH Aachen University (VKA). The simulation model includes the vehicle itself and its subassemblies and can perform transient simulations using any drive cycle which is of interest for the specific application. Besides presenting the holistic simulation model, fuel consumption reduction potentials within the commercial vehicle segment, like Waste Heat Recovery applications, will be shown.