Advance Vehicle Technology Competitions (AVTCs) have been around for 30 years. Since 1994, the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team (HEVT) at Virginia Tech has participated in AVTCs to pursue hybrid technologies. HEVT participated in a four-year AVTC called EcoCAR 3. At the beginning of the competition, HEVT introduced an ultra-rapid onboarding process, the Independent Study (IS) program, to involve non-seniors with the team. Although the IS program provides an incredible experience to non-seniors, it lacks hands-on experience related to the actual work students do once they become full-fledged team members. The challenge is to introduce two hands-on supplemental projects: the energy storage system (ESS) and the motor system. Each project is considered low voltage (LV) for safety and simplicity, however high voltage techniques are used for learning purposes. The LV ESS is used to power up an LV motor system. To limit depletion of the battery energy, another LV motor system is used as a generator to recharge the LV ESS. The lead faculty advisor, Dr. Douglas Nelson, and the project manager, Andres Coello, are working in congruence to introduce a smooth transition of the projects into HEVT's IS program. The hands-on projects are expected to last one semester. The goals are to guide students in the design, construction and testing of both systems. The hands-on supplemental projects are also meant to aid the Applied Automotive Engineering (AAE) curriculum by filling important knowledge gaps current AAE modules are missing. / Master of Science / The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech has participated in Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions since its inception in 1994. These competitions challenge universities to reengineer and convert a vehicle into a hybrid vehicle. The goal is to train the next generation of automotive students by providing real world engineering experiences. The latest Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition is a four-year competition called EcoCAR 3. Due to complexity of the project, the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team introduced an onboarding process to recruit and teach students the required knowledge of hybrid vehicles. To further improve the program, two projects are created to provide hands-on experience and visual learning about the electric layout of a hybrid vehicle. The first project is a low voltage battery pack and the second project is a low voltage motor dynamometer system. Both projects complement each other, meaning the battery pack acts as a power supply to the motor system. Overall, these projects are chosen to provide a good understanding to incoming students in the onboarding process about batteries and motors. Finally, practices used by the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team are implemented in the project designs to improve the overall experience of students in the onboarding process and to improve knowledge transfer.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/84516 |
| Date | 07 August 2018 |
| Creators | Coello Behr, Andres |
| Contributors | Mechanical Engineering, Nelson, Douglas J., Baumann, William T., Huxtable, Scott T. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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