DREXEL UNIVERSITY MECHANICAL ENGINEERING & MECHANICS (MEM)

SENIOR DESIGN PROPOSAL 2015-2016

Part 1: Organizational Data

Project Request ID
PR11
(PR##):
Project Title:
Long Haul Truck Cruise Control for Fuel Optimization
Faculty
Advisor:

Prof. Harry Kwatny

Budget:
Direct prototyping and other costs, EXCLUDING personnel.

Funding needed estimate ($): TBD

Funding currently secured ($): TBD
If more is needed, are you confident that it will be secured
Yes
in time?:
External
stakeholder(s):

None

If your project involves sponsors, clients, advisors, or other stakeholders external to Drexel MEM, list them and
their role here.

Will your project result in patentable Intellectual

Property?:

No

Choose from: Yes, No, Possibly

Team members:

1
2
3
4
5

Name
Lanziye He
Cheng Chen
Qi Jiang
Yuzhou Liu
Xindi Yin

Departmen
t
MEM
MEM
MEM
MEM
MEM

Drexel
Student ID
(e.g.
123456789)
12643551
12630110
12646517
13817437
13456326

Drexel Email
ID (e.g.
abc123)
lh523
cc3253
qj28
yl648
xy57

Part 2: Description and Planning

Stakeholders:
Who are the key stakeholders for your project (individuals or entities)? Whose need(s) are you trying to address,
and who will your design most impact? Enter up to 5, as needed.

1.
2.
3.

International Federation of
Automatic Control (IFAC)
Automobile Industry
Transportation Corporation (Logistic
Companies)

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4.
5.

Amazon (E-Commerce)
IKEA

Need(s) (Problem Statement)

Designing a cruise controller that can minimize the fuel consumption of heavy duty
trucks on long haul missions and also maintaining the same average speed and safety
constraints. After delivering prototype, the group will conduct simulations by using the
model from IFAC.

Potential Solutions:
The potential solution is to develop a cruise vehicle speed controller that gives as low fuel
consumption as possible over the driving mission. The diving mission profile is specified
that includes: a mission specification including a road profile, a model of the truck, including
a MATLAB/Simulink computer model, and a various other requirement specifications and
resources. The controller is thinking about to be online, which is able to send the real-time
conditions of the truck to the service net and receive the optimal plan from the service after
the data being analyzed. Since the majority optimization work is done by the service, the
controller size on the truck can be small and lightweight. Because the controller can reduce
the fuel consumption without increase the load of the truck, which may greatly reduce the
logistic cost, it will be popular among all the transportation related companies.

Success Criteria and Deliverables:

The success is judged by checking whether the solution can reduce the fuel consumption
while meeting the needs for transporting people and goods. First, in order to test the
feasibility, controller model can be run in matlab/Simulink program. Then the model can be
transferred to the real world environment and tested on a real heavy truck.

Techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools:

This truck cruise controller will be mainly designed and tested on a computer program
MATLAB/Simulink, and Mathematica, a technical computing software will help the team
dealing with mathematical computation.
Due to the specialty of the project the most involved technique or skill is controller
design and control theory is the scientific basis for designing controllers. Besides, mastery
of MATLAB/Simulink and its programing logic is crucial to the success of the project.
Software:
MATLAB/Simulink
Mathematica

Project Management:
i) The controls design tools for addressing such mixed logical-dynamic control problems will
be provided by professor Kwatny. The team will provide feedbacks of the process of the
project weekly and confirm with prof. Kwatny that the main direction and methods used are
stay in an appropriate way.
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ii) This project will be done by two sub groups. Each group needs to develop their own
controller model to minimize the heavy truck fuel consumptions while still meet the physical
and safety constraints. For our group, a weekly meeting will always have been held at the
library to discuss the plan for next week and also to work together on confusing parts. In
the first two or three weeks, each member needs to do research of the project problem.
After the third week, the whole group will collaborate together to develop the controller
model by matlab/Simulink and conduct computations via Mathematica. At the end of the
quarter, an effort sheet can be made in order to reflect each persons effort spent on this
project.
iii) Google Docs, Drop Box for files share.

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