Distributed Heterogeneous Simulation of a Hybrid-Electric Vehicle Drive System Using the Simplorer Software Product

To support research and analysis requirements in the development of future hybrid-electric drive systems, a flexible and efficient means of predicting the dynamic performance of large-scale multi-disciplinary systems prior to hardware trials is crucial. With the development of Distributed Heterogeneous Simulation (DHS), the technology now exists to enable this type of investigation. Previously, DHS was shown to allow the interconnection of component simulations running on a single computer or networked computers and developed using any combination of a variety of commercial-off-the-shelf software packages. The US Army is interested in using the Simplorer software product from Ansoft Corporation to model various subsystems that are incorporated with such vehicle system simulations. In this paper, the DHS technique is expanded to support the Simplorer software package; thus, allowing subsystem models developed using this tool to be interconnected to form a dynamic system simulation. A representative hybrid-electric vehicle has been selected as a study system and includes propulsion, generation, weapon, and payload subsystems. Models of the components/subsystems that comprise the power system have each been developed in MATLAB/Simulink or Simplorer. Utilizing the system simulation, studies have been performed to illustrate the dynamic interactions between the subsystems when simulated on a computer network containing Windows-based personal computers.