A New Tool for Advanced Vehicle Simulations

To overcome future stringent regulations on pollutant emissions and to decrease CO₂ emissions and fuel consumption, hybrid vehicles seem to be one of the near future most promising technologies. This type of car uses complex energy management and control strategy. Simulation can be very useful for the development of such a control system.

This paper highlights a new library developed under the AMESim software that enables the simulation of complex interactive systems in vehicles. In addition, the possibility to combine with other AMESim modules, allows the users to add more complexity to any of the sub-components of the vehicle.

As an illustration of this new tool capability, we propose in this paper a simulation example of the Prius, the most known hybrid vehicle which was the first commercial vehicle in 1997 and selected as the 2004 Car of the Year in Europe. Comparisons between measurements and simulations of the response of different components are presented on different driving cycles.