TransForum Vol. 7, No. 1

New Version of PSAT Released

The developers of Argonne's award-winning Powertrain System Analysis Toolkit (PSAT) have announced that a new version of PSAT is now available for licensing and downloading. PSAT is the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership Program's primary vehicle simulation tool. To date, more than 300 researchers worldwide at over 60 companies and universities have used PSAT for vehicle systems analysis, control strategy development, hardware-in-the-loop, and technology validation. PSAT is a forward-looking model that has been continually updated and enhanced, not only to meet the needs of DOE and Argonne, but also to incorporate changes suggested by current industry and university users.

PSAT V6.1, which runs with Matlab R14 (SP3 preferred), incorporates many features and improvements, including:

• New opening screen to differentiate light- and heavy-duty vehicle simulations
• Generation of HTML report for simulations and test data (requires Matlab Report Generator Toolbox)
• Hydraulic hybrid powertrain configuration
• StateFlow vehicle level control strategies, including those for acceleration, deceleration, and shifting (requires StateFlow Toolbox)
• Data analysis tab redesigned to allow easy comparisons of simulations or test data
• Ability to import test data into PSAT/Matlab environment for analysis and/or comparison with simulations
• Enhanced component models
• Additional component data
• Validated 2004 Prius vehicle model data based on Argonne’s Advanced Powertrain Research Facility testing

In 2004, PSAT received an R&D 100 Award as one of the 100 best newly available products and technologies for commercial use from around the world. Also, the model is currently being used by 17 collegiate engineering teams to select their powertrains and develop control strategies as part of the multi-year Challenge X competition, a student engineering vehicle competition sponsored by DOE and General Motors.

What makes PSAT so popular? According to Randy Yost, Engineering Specialist in Analytical Tool Development at General Motors Corporation, "OEMs have limited resources and research funds for new technologies. We have to pick and choose very carefully where we put our money and in what technology. In PSAT, DOE and Argonne have developed a tool that helps speed up the process and allows us to look a many different technologies much sooner than we would otherwise We need a model that's intuitive, easy to use and provides accurate results. PSAT gives us that."

More information is available on the PSAT web site.

March 2007