Vehicle Model Development and Verification Using MathWorks Simulink and National Instruments Virtual Instrumentation

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is one of 17 universities competing in Challenge X - Crossover to Sustainable Mobility, an international competition where teams are challenged to design, build, and test a hybrid vehicle architecture utilizing alternative fuels to reduce the energy consumption and emissions production of a 2005 Chevrolet Equinox. Our first year of competition has focused on vehicle simulation in which The MathWorks SimDriveline and Stateflow toolboxes have been used almost exclusively. A model of our vehicle's split train architecture was developed in SimDriveline and Stateflow was used to develop the control strategy. This approach was extraordinarily useful as we could readily identify hazards such as high torque stresses, battery over or under voltage spikes, battery over current spikes, wheel skidding, and rpm limits. We have been continuously improving our model and control strategy to uncover new hazards and verify components specifications and limits. We have ported our vehicle model to a National Instruments PXI platform and have performed real-time testing and verification. Over the course of the competition we will be further refining our model and control strategy.