Big Area Additive Manufacturing and Hardware-in-the-Loop for Rapid Vehicle Powertrain Prototyping: A Case Study on the Development of a 3-D-Printed Shelby Cobra

Rapid vehicle powertrain development has become a technological breakthrough for the design and implementation of vehicles that meet and exceed the fuel efficiency, cost, and performance targets expected by today’s consumer. Recently, advances in large scale additive manufacturing have provided the means to bridge hardware-in-the-loop with preproduction mule chassis testing. This paper details a case study from Oak Ridge National Laboratory bridging the powertrain-in-the-loop development process with vehicle systems implementation using big area additive manufacturing (BAAM). For this case study, the use of a component-in-the-loop laboratory with math-based models is detailed for the design of a battery electric powertrain to be implemented in a printed prototype mule. The ability for BAAM to accelerate the mule development process via the concept of computer-aided design to part is explored. The integration of the powertrain and the opportunities and challenges of doing so are detailed in this work. The results of the mule-vehicle chassis dynamometer testing are presented. Lastly, the ability to integrate more complex powertrains is discussed.