• Energy Research

In this paper, the powertrain sizing of a fuel-cell hybrid vehicle (FCHV) is investigated. The goal is to determine the fuel-cell system (FCS) size, together with the energy storage system (ESS) size, which leads to the lowest hydrogen consumption. The power source (FCS + ESS) capabilities should also respect the vehicle driveability constraints. Batteries and supercapacitors are considered as ESSs. The power management strategy is a global optimization algorithm respecting charge sustaining of the ESS. The impacts of the driving cycle (urban, outer urban, and highway), ESS technology, and vehicle driveability constraints on hydrogen consumption are analyzed in detail.

Hybrid vehicles use two energy sources for their propelling. Usually an internal combustion engine (ICE) is used with one or more electric machine(s) (EM). The problem is then to split the driver power demand between the ICE and the EM in order to minimize a criterion, usually the fuel consumption. A global optimization algorithm based on optimal control theory is recalled. The obtained results are optimal but can only be obtained in simulation. For real time control purpose, this optimization algorithm is applied on a receding horizon. The main problem is then to choose the variables to be predicted on this horizon. By analyzing the optimization algorithm, it is shown that the prediction of the future driving conditions (vehicle speed and driver torque demand) is not necessary. Therefore, under some assumptions, a real time control is possible.

This paper proposes a way to investigate the benefit of hybridising a fuel cell vehicle with a second energy source such as batteries or supercapacitors packs. A global optimisation algorithm based on optimal control theory is proposed to determine an efficient power splitting between the fuel cell system (FCS) and the energy storage system (ESS). Both hybridisation and control strategy should minimise the hydrogen consumption for a given driving cycle. This method has fast computation time, and as a consequence many simulations can be performed within a short period, thus providing an interesting tool to test and compare different degree of hybridisation for various fuel cell hybrid vehicle (FCHV) parameters and driving cycles.

Control strategies for hybrid powertrains are algorithms that choose the power split between the engine and motor of a hybrid vehicle in order to minimize the fuel consumption and/or emissions. The goal of this paper is to propose an efficient tool to evaluate minimal fuel consumption that is achievable in simulation. Several approaches have been proposed, using heuristics (Delprat et al. 1999) or dynamic programming (Brahma et al., 2000; Rimaux et al., 1999). One drawback of these approaches is the huge amount of time required to obtain solutions. The approach described here is based on optimal control theory (Lewis & Syrmos, 1995) and avoids this drawback. Moreover, it can be easily applied to a large family of parallel arrangements.