This study aims to investigate the hysteresis characteristics of a pneumatic braking system for multi-axle heavy vehicles (MHVs). Hysteresis affects emergency braking performance severely. The fact that MHVs have a large size and complex structure leads to more nonlinear coupling property of the pneumatic braking system compared to normal two-axle vehicles. Thus, theoretical analysis and simulation are not enough when studying hysteresis. In this article, the hysteresis of a pneumatic brake system for an eight-axle vehicle in an emergency braking situation is studied based on a novel test bench. A servo drive device is applied to simulate the driver’s braking intensions normally expressed by opening or moving speed of the brake pedal. With a reasonable arrangement of sensors and the NI LabVIEW platform, both the delay time of eight loops and the response time of each subassembly in a single loop are detected in real time. The outcomes of the experiment show that the delay time of each loop gets longer with the increase of pedal opening, and a quadratic relationship exists between them. Based on this, the pressure transient in the system is fitted to a first-order plus time delay model. Besides, the response time of treadle valve and controlling pipeline accounts for more than 80% of the loop’s total delay time, indicating that these two subassemblies are the main contributors to the hysteresis effect.

Dual-motor Electric Drive Tracked Vehicles (DDTVs) have attracted increasing attention due to their high transmission efficiency and economical fuel consumption. A test bench for the development and validation of new DDTV technologies is necessary and urgent. How to load the vehicle on a DDTV test bench exactly the same as on a real road is a crucial issue when designing the bench. This paper proposes a novel dynamic load emulation method to address this problem. The method adopts dual dynamometers to simulate both the road load and the inertia load that are imposed on the dual independent drive systems. The vehicle’s total inertia equivalent to the drive wheels is calculated with separate consideration of vehicle body, tracks and road wheels to obtain a more accurate inertia load. A speed tracking control strategy with feedforward compensation is implemented to control the dual dynamometers, so as to make the real-time dynamic load emulation possible. Additionally, a MATLAB/Simulink model of the test bench is built based on a dynamics analysis of the platform. Experiments are finally carried out on this test bench under different test conditions. The outcomes show that the proposed load emulation method is effective, and has good robustness and adaptability to complex driving conditions. Besides, the accuracy of the established test bench model is also demonstrated by comparing the results obtained from the simulation model and experiments.

The load simulation test bench plays an important role in tracked vehicle development. The stability and accuracy of the system have a vital impact on the experimental results. To accurately reproduce the power performance of a tracked vehicle on the test platform, this paper aims to investigate the model, control, and calibration method of the test bench. Firstly, the dynamic model of a tracked vehicle under complex driving conditions is analyzed and established, which takes driving torque as the input and driving wheel speed as the output. Then, considering the uncertainties and disturbances in the system model, a 2-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) control method combined with a disturbance observer is proposed to solve the stability problem of the system. Furthermore, in order to investigate the accuracy of the simulation on the test bed, a method of calibrating the system by a flywheel set with standard inertia is proposed. In the calibration process, the influence of the system resistance torque and the original mechanical inertia on the results is considered, and the response time of the inertia simulation is analyzed in both a steady and dynamic state. Finally, the load simulation test is carried out with the corrected system. The test results show that the system has a high load simulation accuracy under various load simulation tests.

Dual-motor electric drive tracked vehicles (DDTVs) have drawn much attention in the trends of hybridization and electrification for tracked vehicles. Their transmission chains differ significantly from the traditional ones. Due to the complication and slug of a traditional tracked vehicle braking system, as well as the difference of track-ground with tire-road, research of antilock braking control of tracked vehicles is rather lacking. With the application of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs), applying an advanced braking control strategy becomes practical. This paper develops a novel emergency braking control strategy using a sliding mode slip ratio controller and a rule-based braking torque allocating method. Simulations are conducted under various track-ground conditions for comparing the control performance of the proposed strategy with three other strategies including the full braking strategy, traditional antilock braking strategy, as well as sliding mode slip ratio strategy without the use of motors. For an initial speed of 80 km/h, simulation results show that the proposed control strategy performs the best among all strategies mentioned above. Several hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experiments are conducted under the same track-ground conditions as the ones in the simulations. The experiment results verified the validity of the proposed emergency braking control strategy.

The precise mathematical model for the tooth surface and transition surface of spiral bevel gears is derived. Taking a pair of spiral bevel gears of a heavy vehicle as an example of calculation and analysis, a finite element model of spiral bevel gears transmission system is established. Through the finite element tooth contact analysis under quasi-static loading and high loading condition, the influences of torque on the root stress distribution, contact stress, and transmission error are discussed, and the results are compared with the empirical formula results. Finally, a contact performance test bench of spiral bevel gear pair is developed, then the root bending stress, contact pattern, and transmission error tests are carried out. These experiment results are compared with analyzed ones, which showed a good agreement.

Voids usually have a detrimental effect on the performance of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP). This paper presents a nonlinear dynamic method, known as recurrence quantification analysis...