itsowl-ImWR: Innovatives modulares Antriebswechselrichtersystem für die Elektrifizierung von Nebenaggregaten in Fahrzeuganwendungen

Overall project goal

Nowadays auxiliaries in vehicles like compressors for air condition, fans, and hydraulic pumps are driven directly by the combustion engine. The power budget which is available to these aggregates is coupled to the speed of the engine and cannot be steered on demand. Therefore the aggregates have to be scaled in a way, that they can be operated at low engine speed. As a consequence, weight and size of the aggregates will raise and the efficiency will decrease. Hence the introduction of electrically powered drives for the auxiliaries has a high potential. The goal of this project is the development of a modular and electrically supplied drive system of auxiliaries in vehicles. In this way, the power to operate the several aggregates shall be adjustable depending on the individual demand. As a result, the efficiency of the drives of the aggregates will be increased, weight and size will be reduced, and the fuel consumption will be also reduced.

Intelligent interconnection of the components of the modular inverter: The inIT institute is responsible for this task which comprises both the mapping of the inverter system into the vehicle network and the handling of the modular internals regarding information and communication. The concepts shall be applicable to both the today communication standards and to future in-vehicle communication technologies, which will be also investigated for usability in in-vehicle networks. Self-configuration algorithms for the communication of the inverter modules will be introduced to reduce the engineering effort at vendor and customer sites. For this reason, self-description ability of the inverter modules shall be implemented. Additionally, address assignment algorithms and mappings of process objects on communication objects will be developed in alignment with relevant standards of the various vehicle domains.