Design, analysis, and simulation of a power-split device for hybrid two-wheeler

Abstract

In a developing country like India, two-wheelers dominate the automotive market with around 80% (SIAM homepage, http://www.siamindia.com, [1]) market shares. With the growing concern of environment pollution and new stringent norms coming, time has come for cleaner vehicles and alternatives. This paper highlights a novel transmission for hybrid electric two-wheelers, which can be used to run the vehicle in full electric and hybrid mode. This system replaces the gearbox of a conventional vehicle while converting it into a parallel hybrid. It primarily consists of a power-split device which gets power from two sources, engine and electric motor, as per need for torque and speed requirements of vehicle. Engine is disengaged while running on the pure electric mode. For running on the parallel hybrid mode, to get the desired speed ratios from the system, motor rotation is varied. This is done based on the algorithm developed that takes input from the vehicle speed and engine speed sensors. For this, the system-level simulation is done on MATLAB Simulink and performance is optimized for torque and speed the base vehicle. Simulation results clearly depict the smooth running, like automatic transmission. The simulation results show fuel consumption drop of around 80% as power is shared between engine and motor which will ultimately lead to lesser emissions. To get the high starting torque benefits of the electric motor, vehicle runs only on motor up to speed of 12 kmph.