TransForum Vol. 7, No. 2

Argonne and PSAT: Making the Connection

Each year, the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC), which comprises more than 600 federal laboratories and research centers, recognizes federal laboratory employees who have "worked industriously with others to move a vision from the laboratory to the marketplace, so that others may benefit." This year, Argonne's FLC Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer winner is the Powertrain System Analysis Toolkit (PSAT), developed by Aymeric Rousseau, Phillip Sharer, and Sylvain Pagerit of Argonne's Energy Systems Division, supported by Lee Slezak of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program.

Because teamwork is at the heart of technology development and transfer, the theme for this year's FLC Technology Transfer Award competition was "Making the Connection." The story of PSAT's successful development and transfer to industry is filled with examples of the efforts of its developers to make those crucial connections: with their original industry partners, with DOE, and — finally — with PSAT users.

Members of the Powertrain System Analysis Toolkit development and support team confer.

The project began in 1995 with a request from the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) (Ford, General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, and DOE) for a model to optimize hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs). The automakers wanted a model that all the partners could use to work on collaborative projects. That tool was the forerunner of PSAT.

In 1999, working closely with the PNGV partners, Rousseau and his team at Argonne took over the project, rewriting the entire code, adding a graphical user interface, and allowing users to compare test data with simulation data. The three automakers agreed to release a nonproprietary version of the software about three years ago; this version was a direct antecedent of the version of PSAT that is distributed today. Soon after the nonproprietary version of PSAT was introduced, DOE conducted an assessment to see which software would best serve as the primary vehicle simulation tool to support its FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program and the 21st Century Truck Partnership. PSAT was selected as a result of this thorough independent assessment, which evaluated candidates from the U.S. Government and the private sector.

The main strategy in developing PSAT was to make the software as flexible and user-friendly as possible. So the development team strengthened PSAT's analytical capabilities, increased the number of powertrain configurations that PSAT could simulate (currently more than 400), and improved the model to ensure effortless integration of virtually any proprietary models, controls, and driving cycles — making PSAT truly unique. These efforts help explain why, just two years after being made available for licensing, PSAT has become one of the most widely distributed and executed software licenses at Argonne to date. The model is available on the Argonne Software Shop web site with a downloadable video demonstration that offers an extensive review of PSAT capabilities.

Since then, the Argonne team has worked hard to make PSAT accessible to new users through journal articles, presentations, conference papers, and the extraordinary degree of technical support offered to current users. The PSAT development team is in constant contact with users, who often request new features for new types of studies. When the new features will benefit users generally, they are incorporated in subsequent releases of the software.

These achievements and the continued growth in new licensed users are also testament to the benefits of the national laboratory system. Industry researchers are often under tremendous pressure to obtain analytical results as quickly as possible with the software tools at hand; little time can be budgeted to make the software they use more flexible, reusable, or user-friendly. Because it is based at a national laboratory, the Argonne team is able to focus on these developmental efforts and respond quickly to user requests.

A recent Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between Argonne and General Motors is aimed at developing an enhanced version of PSAT to serve as the basis for the development of an industry standard for vehicle and component modeling. Successful completion of this project would put PSAT at the center of a revolution in advanced vehicle design by permitting models to be developed through a common language and a common means of exchanging technology.

In the long term, the PSAT developers hope that their software will help foster the development of advanced vehicle technologies (such as HEVs, plug-in HEVs, and fuel cell and hydrogen-fueled vehicles) and contribute to eventual petroleum independence for transportation sectors worldwide.

PSAT was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy-FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program.

PSAT is available on the Software Shop web site at http://www.anl.gov/techtransfer/Software_Shop/PSAT_NP/PSAT_NP.html.

August 27, 2007