AbstractsComputer Science

The cost and fuel economy of hybrid electrical vehicles (HEVs) are significantly dependent on the power-train energy storage system (ESS). A series HEV with a minimal all-electric mode (AEM) permits minimizing the size and cost of the ESS. This manuscript, pursuing the minimal size tactic, introduces a bandwidth based methodology for designing an efficient ESS. First, for a mid-size reference vehicle, a parametric study is carried out over various minimal-size ESSs, both hybrid (HESS) and non-hybrid (ESS), for finding the highest fuel economy. The results show that a specific type of high power battery with 4.5 kWh capacity can be selected as the winning candidate to study for further minimization. In a second study, following the twin goals of maximizing Fuel Economy (FE) and improving consumer acceptance, a sports car class Series-HEV (SHEV) was considered as a potential application which requires even more ESS minimization. The challenge with this vehicle is to reduce the ESS size compared to 4.5 kWh, because the available space allocation is only one fourth of the allowed battery size in the mid-size study by volume. Therefore, an advanced bandwidth-based controller is developed that allows a hybridized Subaru BRZ model to be realized with a light ESS. The result allows a SHEV to be realized with 1.13 kWh ESS capacity. In a third study, the objective is to find optimum SHEV designs with minimal AEM assumption which cover the design space between the fuel economies in the mid-size car study and the sports car study. Maximizing FE while minimizing ESS cost is more aligned with customer acceptance in the current state of market. The techniques applied to manage the power flow between energy sources of the power-train significantly affect the results of this optimization. A Pareto Frontier, including ESS cost and FE, for a SHEV with limited AEM, is introduced using an advanced bandwidth-based control strategy teamed up with duty ratio control. This controller allows the series hybrids advantage of tightly managing engine efficiency to be extended to lighter ESS, as compared to the size of the ESS in available products in the market.