This research is focused on designing a new generation of CAD tools that could help a ?hybrid vehicle? designer with the design process to come up with better vehicle configurations. The conventional design process for any type of hybrid-electric vehicle would start from the vehicle performance criteria and continue by applying them to the physical models of di?erent components of the vehicle. The final result would be strict and precise characteristics of all components in the vehicle; this scenario gives only one option for the desired vehicle. A new perspective is introduced in developing a new methodology in the art of design. This new method enables the designer to see a wider picture of what he is designing and have access to all his options and capabilities. The method is designed to help the designer ask the right questions about his design options, intelligently guide him through the design process by squeezing the space of solutions and take him to the final designed product. The new methodology is implemented in this research with the following capabilities: 1. The proposed tool allows the designer to choose any arbitrary set of variable to be known and leave the rest as the ones to be solved for; either they are vehicle component characteristic variables or performance measures. This provides a great amount of flexibility and success in designing a vehicle from any available information about it. 2. Instead of starting from single values, the new tool can work with a range of possible values for the known variables and suggest range of feasible values for the unknown variables. This provides the capability of refining the design even further and performing sensitivity analysis. 3. The proposed tool is a package that o?ers both design and simulation capabilities. It includes analytical performance simulation as well as simulation with arbitrary drive cycles and engine controllers. 4. Capability of 1D, 2D and 3D representation of any arbitrary set of design variables in the solution space. The idea is implemented in a pilot version software package for vehicle design.
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