Intersections brings you the latest updates in transportation and energy research; here you’ll learn the key steps Argonne is taking to advance American energy choices in transportation, including core research findings, major concepts being explored, new collaborations and opportunities to engage with us further.

As we all know, mobility and transportation are undergoing transformative changes. We now have more energy and mobility choices than ever before, from electric and hybrid vehicles to combustion engines to bike and ride sharing, and on-demand buses and light rail.  At the same time that our energy and mobility options are diversifying, they are also becoming more connected and automated, with emerging approaches for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to infrastructure communications and batteries that can give and take energy from the grid.

With these changes come new opportunities. Opportunities to make materials and components that can drive up performance, fuel economy and energy efficiency. Opportunities to design and build better infrastructure to support evolving mobility and environmental needs. Opportunities to improve system designs and processes for better integration and connectivity.

But before we can grasp any of these, and indeed define America’s energy and transportation future, we must overcome numerous hurdles across a range of fields, a feat that demands greater collaboration, engagement and communication.

The CTR works at the forefront of clearing many of these hurdles. Our multidisciplinary team is actively using its expertise and Argonne’s advanced testing capabilities and simulation tools to deliver critical solutions that can advance America’s transportation systems and ensure our future mobility energy needs are met while improving the user experiences and the changing demands of the marketplace.

Many tools in and around the laboratory help us in this mission, including:

• AUTONOMIE, a modeling and simulation framework developed by Argonne evaluates energy and cost impact of advanced vehicle technologies;
• VERIFI (The Virtual Engine Research Institute and Fuels Initiative), our world- renowned source for high-fidelity, 3-D simulations of combustion engines, powertrains, and fuels;
• POLARIS, a high-performance, open-source agent-based modeling framework designed for simulating large-scale transportation systems;
• Argonne’s Mobility Research Facility, which can simulate real-world conditions to effectively assess energy efficiency, communication and automation features along with vehicle and driver performance;
• GREET, a widely used, patented lifecycle model for Greenhouse gas, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation. GREET is a free program that allows users to analyze technologies over an entire life cycle–from well to wheels–and from raw material mining to vehicle disposal.

In addition to these tools, we take advantage of the unique cross-functional expertise and sophisticated facilities that only a national laboratory like Argonne can provide—like the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne’s synchrotron light source, and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, which provide robust high-performance computing resources.

Amid all these diverse resources, Intersections is yet another. We hope this newsletter will inspire new collaborations, conversations and ideas to fuel new solutions to America’s mobility and transportation challenges. By working together, we can ensure a bright, clean and more secure energy future for our nation.