CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF A FORMULA HYBRID POWERTRAIN SYSTEM UTILIZING FUNCTIONALITY-BASED MODELING TOOLS

Formula Hybrid is a collegiate design competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The competition is a spin-off of the Formula SAE series and requires that students design, build and race an electric-internal combustion engine hybrid automobile. To assist the design process of Texas A&M's first Formula Hybrid entry, formal functionality-based conceptual design tools were applied to explore and select potential powertrain concepts. These tools included behavioral modeling along with a functionality-based sensitivity analysis. Two levels of model fidelity were used. The first (low) fidelity level was used to screen a large number of powertrain concepts. The second (high) fidelity level was used to select from a smaller but more refined set of concepts. Ultimately, four concepts were identified as suitable to use in a Formula Hybrid car. The results of this analysis were presented to the Texas A&M Formula Hybrid team. The team eventually selected a concept similar to one of the top four concepts in the study (the electric motor, battery capacity, IC engine and powertrain configuration were nearly identical as those used to parameterize the model in the analysis). Texas A&M's Formula Hybrid team went on to win the 2009 Formula Hybrid competition by scoring 980.9 points out of 1000 (the 2(nd) place team scored 757.7 points). The results of the analysis done for the Texas A&M Formula Hybrid team are presented in this work along with the suggested powertrain concepts.