Drivetrain of electric car: Development of virtual laboratory for E-learning

Virtual laboratories that animate scientific phenomena are becoming an increasingly popular method to teach students. Electrical engineering is considered difficult to understand as it demands a high level of imagination. This difficulty can be dealt with to a large extent by developing visual aids in the form of animations. Animations can help students to grasp the idea quickly and therefore can serve as an effective aid for the learning process. This paper deals with the development of such a teaching aid to tackle a particular problem in Electrical Drives and Power Electronics (ED&PE). The problem is that of the electrical drive train of a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) that can regenerate power during braking or whenever required (Plug-in HEV, PHEV). This paper attempts to give a step-by-step insight into the various design choices, the operation of the converters and their controls, the learning objectives and finally the development of the graphic multimedia for this drive train.