原稿
A New Type Car -- Hybrid Electric Vehicle
With skyrocketing fuel prices and changes in weather patterns, many car manufacturers claimed to develop the kind of vehicles that will increase the mileage and reduce the emissions. Hybrid car is a kind of vehicle which can meet above requirements. A hybrid car features a small fuel-efficient gas engine combined with an electric motor that assists the engine.
The reasons of building such a complicated machine are twofold: to reduce tailpipe emissions and to improve mileage. Firstly, hybrid cars are good for the environment. They can reduce smog by 90 percent and they use far less gasoline than conventional cars. Meanwhile, hybrid cars burn less gasoline per mile, so they release fewer greenhouse gases. Secondly, hybrid cars are economical. Hybrid cars, which run on gas and electricity, can get up to 55 to 60 miles per gallon in city driving, while a typical SUV might use three times as much gas for the same distance! There are three reasons can mainly account for that: 1) Hybrid engines are much smaller than those on conventional cars. A hybrid car engine is to accommodate the 99% of driving time when a car is not going up hills or accelerating quickly. When extr
a acceleration power is needed, it relies on the battery to provide additional force. 2) Hybrid gasoline engine can shut off when the car is stopped and run off their electric motor and battery.
3) Hybrid cars often recover braking energy. Electric motors could take the lost kinetic energy in braking and use it to charge the battery. Furthermore, hybrids are better than all-electric cars because hybrid car batteries recharge as you drive so there is no need to plug in. Most electric cars need to be recharged every 50-100miles. Also, most electric cars cannot go faster than 50-60 mph, while hybrids can.
Hybrid cars bridge the gap between electric and gasoline-powered cars by traveling further and driving faster and hybrid gas-electric cars are proving to be a feasible alternative at a time of high gas prices. So, in my opinion, hybrid cars will have a bright future.
How Does Hybrid Electric Vehicle Work？
You probably own a gasoline or diesel-engine car. You may have heard of electric vehicles too. A hybrid vehicle or hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) is a combination of both. Hybrid vehicles utilize two or more sources of energy for propulsion. In the case of HEVs, a combustion engine and an electric motor are used.
How it works depends on the type of drive train it has. A hybrid vehicle can either have a parallel or series or parallel-series drive train.
Parallel Hybrid
The parallel hybrid car has a gas tank, a combustion engine, transmission,
electric motor, and batteries.
汽车itA parallel hybrid is designed to run directly from either the combustion engine or the electric motor. It can run using both the engine and the motor. As a conventional vehicle, the parallel hybrid draws its power from the combustion engine which will then drive the transmission that turns the wheels. If it is using the electric motor, the car draws its power from the batteries. The energy from the batteries will then power the electric motor that drives the transmission and turns the wheel.
Both the combustion engine and the electric motor are used at the same time during quick acceleration, on steep ascend, or when either the engine or the motor needs additional boost.
Since the engine is directly connected to the wheels in a parallel drive train, it eliminates the inefficiency of converting mechanical energy into electrical energy and back. This makes a very effecti
ve vehicle to drive on the highway.
Series Hybrid
The series hybrid car also has a gas tank, a combustion engine, transmission, electric motor, and batteries with the addition of the generator. The generator can be the electric motor or it can be another separate component.
The series configuration is the simplest among the 3. The engine is not connected to the transmission rather it is connected to the electric motor. This means that the transmission can be driven only by the electric motor which draws its energy from the battery pack, the engine or the generator.
A hybrid car with a series drive train is more suited for city driving conditions since the engine will not be subjected to the varying speed demands (stop, go, and idle) that contributes to fuel consumption.
Series-Parallel Hybrid
The series-parallel configuration solves the individual problems of the parallel and series hybrid. By combining the 2 designs, the transmission can be directly connected to the engine or can be separated for optimum fuel consumption. The Toyota Prius and the Ford Escape Hybrid use this techn
ology.
Honda’s hybrid
For those of you who have toyed with the idea of buying a hybrid but were discouraged by the price, you are not alone. In fact, despite the growing concern for the environment, not to mention the skyrocketing price of gas, hybrid cars still only represent a small percentage of global car sales, and a major reason for this is the cost.
Hybrids are considered the wave of the future because they not only reduce emissions, addressing the issue of climate change, but they get great gas mileage, an important consideration with the current price of oil. It should be noted that hybrids can also improve the power of the engine, which compromises any advantages in fuel efficiency and emissions. Whatever the application, however, the technology makes the cars more expensive.
Because of this, they are the vehicle of choice for only a small niche of people who can afford them, and they currently enjoy a special status amongst the image conscious celebrity-set. For most average consumers, however, they are not an option.
That may soon change.
Honda Motor Corporation, one of the largest car manufacturers in the world and a leader in fuel efficient technology, has unveiled it’s plan to introduce a low-cost hybrid by 2009. If they can pull it off, they hope to make the hybrid a more mainstream car that will be more appealing to the general public, with the ultimate goal of achieving greater sales and broader appeal than their current incarnation.
This, of course, is making Detroit nervous, and may signal a need for American car makers to start making greener and more fuel efficient vehicles, something they could afford to ignore in the past because hybrid cars weren’t worth their attention (due to such a small market share) while gas-guzzling SUVs have such high profit margins.
Honda, meanwhile, has had to confront a growing need to compete with Toyota, which has not only grown to be the world’s largest automaker, but makes the car that has become synonymous with the hybrid movement, the Prius. Honda is therefore faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of challenging Toyota’s dominance in the market.
Concurrently, Toyota is racing to lower production costs on the Prius, as well, which would hopefully result in a lower cost to the consumer. All eyes are on a potentially favorable car buyers market in 2009.
In the meantime, with even adamant global warming naysayers warming up (no pun intended) to the possibilities of an ecological disaster on the horizon, maybe it’s time that we got over our need to drive huge SUVs and start moderating our fuel consumption.
Then again, as gas prices hovering around $4.00 and with no ceiling in sight, we may have little choice in the matter.
Engine Operating Principles
Most automobile dngines are internal combustion, reciprocating 4-stroke gasoline engines, but other types have been used, including the diesel, the rotary ( Wankel ) , the 2-srtoke, and stratified charge.
Reciprocating means up and down or banck and forth, It is the up and down action of a piston in the cylinder blick, or engine block. The blick is an iron or aluminum casting that contains engine cylinders and passges called water jackets for coolant circulation. The top of the block is covered with the cylinder head. Which forms the combustion chanber. The bottom of the block is covered with an oil pan or oil sump.
Power is produced by the linear motion of a piston in a cylinder. However, this linear motion must be c
hanged into rotary motion to turn the wheels of cars of trucks. The piston is attached to the top of a connecting rod by a pin, called a piston pin or wrist pin. The bottom of the connecting rod is attached to the crankshaft. The connecting rod transmits the up-and-down motion of the piston to the crankshaft, which changes it into rotary motion.
The connecting rod is mounted on the crankshaft with large beaings called rod
bearings. Similar bearings, called main bearings, are used to mount the crankshaft in the block. Shown in Fig. 1-1
The diameter of the cylinder is called the engine bore. Displacement and compression ratio are two frequently used engine specifications. Displacement indicates engine size, and compression ratio compares the total cylinder volume to compression chamber volume.
The term stroke is used to describe the movement of the iston within the cylinder, as well as the distance of piston travel. Depending on the type of engine the operating cycle may require either two or four strokes to complete. The 4-stroke engine is also called Otto cycle engine, in honor of the German engineer, Dr. Nikolaus Otto, who first applied the principle in 1876. In the 4-stroke engine, four strokes of the piston in the cylinder are required to complete one full operating cycle. Each stroke is na
med after the action it performs intake, compression, power, and exhaust in that order, shown in Fig1-2.
1、Intake stroke
As the piston moves down, the vaporized mixture of fuel and air enters the cylinder through open intake valve. To obtain the maximum filling of the cylinder the intake valve opens about 10°before , giving 20°overlap. The inlet valve remains open until some 50°after to take advantage of incoming mixture.
2、 Compression stroke
The piston turns up, the intake valve closes, the mixture is compressed within the combustion chamber, while the pressure rise to about 1Mpa, depending on various factors including the compression ratio, throttle opening and engine speed. Near the top of the stroke the mixture is ignited by a spark which bridges the gap of the spark plug.
3、 Power stroke
The expanding gases of combustion produces a rise in pressure of the gas to some 3.5Mpa, and the p
iston is forced down in the cylinder. The exhaust valve opens near the bottom of the stroke.
4、Exhust stroke
The piston moves back up with the exhaust valve open some 50°before b.d.d., allowing the pressure within the cylinder to fall and to reduce ‘back’pressure on the piston during the exhaust stroke, and the burned gases are pushed out to prepare for the next intake stroke.The intake valve usually opens just before the exhaust stroke. This 4-stroke cycle is continuously repeared in every as long as the engineremains running.
A 2-stroke engine also goes through four actions to complete one operating cycle.
However, the intake and the compression actions are combined in one seroke, and the power and exhaust actions are combined in the other stroke. The term2-stroke cycle or 2-stroke is preferred to the term 2-cycle, which is really not accurate.
In automobile engines, all pistons are attached to a single crankshaft. The more cylinders an engine has, the more power strokes produced for cach revolution. This means that an 8-cylinder engine runs more smoothly bdcause the power atrokes are
closer together in time and in degrees of engine rotation.
The cylinders of multi-cylinder automotive engines arranged in one of three ways. 1、Inline engines use a single block of cylinder.Most 4-cylinder and any 6-cylinder engines are of this design. The cylinders do not have to be vertical. They can be inclined either side.
2、V-type engines use two equal bands of cylinders, usually inclined 60degrees or 90degrees from the cach other. Most V-type engines have 6 or 8 cylinders, although V-4 and V-12 engines have been built.
3、Horizontally opposed or pancake engines have two equal banks of cylinders 180degreeas apart. These space saving engine designs are often air-cooled, and are found in the Chevrolet Carvair, Porsches, Subaus, and V olkswagens. Subaus design is liquid cooled.
Late-model V olkswagen vans use a liquid-cooled version of the air cooled VWhorizontally opposed engine.