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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
Adaptive Fuzzy Logic Energy Management Strategy
Based on Reasonable SOC Reference Curve for
Online Control of Plug-in Hybrid Electric City Bus
He Tian, Xu Wang, Ziwang Lu, Yong Huang, and Guangyu Tian
Abstract— The key challenge in energy management of plug-
in hybrid electric vehicles is how to macroscopically plan the
battery energy considering trip information while microscopically
distributing the torque between power sources to improve the
energy efficiency of the hybrid propulsion system. Nowadays,
future partial trip information can be obtained from an intelligent
transportation system and a navigation system when travel-
ing starts. But how to use these trip information sufficiently
remains to be further studied. Moreover, the online energy
management strategy should not take up too many resources
of micro-controller. Based on these conditions, we proposed a
novel energy management strategy for plug-in hybrid electric
city buses. First, Pontryagin’s minimum principle was used to
obtain the optimal results of different driving cycles. Then,
a neural network module was designed and trained to learn
the mechanisms of optimal state-of-charge (SOC) curves. When
trip starts, the neural network module can be used to generate
a reasonable battery SOC reference curve according to the
partial trip information available. Finally, an adaptive fuzzy logic
controller was applied to follow the trend of the SOC reference
curve. The main contribution of this paper is that the effectiveness
of battery energy planning by comprehensively considering the
future partial trip information and historical optimal SOC curves
is verified, which provides a new perspective for real vehicle
energy management. Simulation results show 4.61%–13.49% fuel
savings on the trained and untrained driving cycles as compared
with the charge-depleting and charge-sustaining strategy.
Index Terms— Plug-in hybrid electric city bus (PHECB), online
energy management strategy, partial trip information, neural
network, SOC reference curve, fuzzy logic.
I. I NTRODUCTION
C OMPARED with hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-
in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are much more
promising in the realm of reducing fuel consumption [1], [2].
PHEVs have a higher battery capacity compared to HEVs.
The battery can be consumed till a much lower energy level
and recharged by the electric utility grid. The more electric
power can be utilized to achieve additional fuel savings.
However, the PHEV energy management strategy is much
Manuscript received August 19, 2016; revised April 25, 2017;
accepted July 10, 2017. This work was supported by the Shanghai Automobile
Industry Technology Development Foundation and SAIC Motor Corpora-
tion Commercial Vehicle Technology Center under Grant 1530. The Asso-
ciate Editor for this paper was E. Kosmatopoulos. (Corresponding author:
Guangyu Tian.)
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Automotive
Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail:
tian_gy@tsinghua.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2017.2729621
1524-9050 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
more complicated compared with that of HEV, because battery
depletion during a cycle must be optimized based on the
detailed trip information. Nowadays, plug-in hybrid electric
city buses (PHECBs) have been increasingly adopted in the
mass transit system of China, as a suitable energy management
strategy will help bus companies reducing the use-cost.
Many studies have been carried out to reduce the fuel
consumption of PHEVs. Among them, dynamic program-
ming (DP) [3], [4] and Pontryagin’s Minimum Princi-
ple (PMP) [5]–[7] claim their ability to get the theoretically
optimal results of the specific driving cycles. However, these
two optimal strategies can not be used online. As they require
the entire driving cycle known beforehand, which is impossible
in reality. Equivalent consumption minimization strategy is
solved using PMP [8], [9], but it can not be regarded as
optimal unless the entire trip information available. Although
DP and PMP can not be used online, the optimal results
provide the empirical knowledge for the design of other energy
management strategies. For example, the optimal results of
several driving cycles can extract control rules [10], [11].
The optimal results can also be applied to train the neural
network based strategies, which achieves the sound control
performance [12], [13]. Some phenomena can be concluded
from optimal control results, including battery SOC gradually
decreases to a lower threshold compared with charge-depleting
and charge-sustaining (CDCS) strategy [4], [9] and the detailed
trip information impact the charging and discharging of the
battery [14].
Since the better fuel economy achieved when battery SOC
is gradually depleting, some researchers have proposed many
methods to construct a SOC reference curve when trip starts.
Tulpule et al. [9] assume the battery SOC is linearly decreas-
ing with the distance traveled. In paper [15], [16], the SOC
reference curve is an affine function of the current driven
distance. The role of the SOC reference curve is to make sure
completely battery discharging at the end of the trip. Due to the
lack of consideration of trip information, the SOC reference
curves generated by the methods mentioned above may deviate
from the optimal SOC curves. In paper [17], [18], two sophis-
ticated but relatively precise methods have been proposed
to produce a SOC reference curve. However, to obtain trip
information such as the future average driver power demands
and standard deviation of vehicle speed are much harder
to realize. Therefore, the online implementation of the two
methods is limited. Moreover, the methods to construct the
SOC reference curve described above does not take into
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
account the application of corresponding knowledge extracted
from the optimal data thus lacking accuracy. As for trip
information, it determines how much fuel economy can be
achieved [19]. Many efforts have been made to obtain a certain
degree of it. Through analyzing statistical characteristics of
history driving cycles, the stochastic model of driver power
demands can be built [20]–[22]. The driving mission can be
modeled based on historical traffic information [23]. Besides,
some researchers focus on using the historical trip information
to predict partial future trip information [24]–[27]. Nowadays
in China, partial trip information such as the average speed
and length of route segments can be obtained from intelligent
transportation system (ITS) and navigation system. Some
researchers focus on using these partial trip information to
construct future driving cycles [28], [29]. Nevertheless, how
to use these partial trip information sufficiently and efficiently
for online energy management of PHEVs remains to be further
studied.
Based on above, this paper proposed a novel method to
generate a reasonable SOC reference curve at the beginning
of the trip which can make full use of the optimal results
of different driving cycles and the partial trip information
getting from ITS and navigation system. With this reasonable
SOC curve, the energy management is simplified as a SOC
tracking problem. The control strategy only needs to determine
the torque split between power sources to follow the trend
of the reasonable SOC curve considering working conditions
of power-train components. The micro-controller resources
usage should also be concerned to realize the online energy
management strategy. Because fuzzy logic has strong inference
capability and only use limited and specified resources of a
micro-controller, many researchers have proposed the fuzzy
logic based control strategies which show good performance.
Langari and Won [30], [31] use fuzzy logic to recognize over-
all traffic environment. Wu et al. [32] proposed a changeable
fuzzy-based controller for parallel powertrain based on driving
cycle recognition, which can correctly select the corresponding
membership functions and rules optimized simultaneously by
using particle swarm optimization. Denis et al. [33] proposed
a blend fuzzy logic based controller for parallel PHEV only
require the total trip length. The feed of driving condition
information can increase the strategy effectiveness in every
situation. Besides, optimal results can also be used to guide
the design of a fuzzy logic controller [34]. The aforementioned
fuzzy logic applications can be easily implemented in the
micro-controller to be used online.
This paper proposes a fuzzy logic energy management strat-
egy based on the reasonable SOC reference curve for online
control of PHECB. Firstly, PMP was used to obtain optimal
results of different driving cycles. Consequently, a neural
network module was designed to learn the mechanisms of
optimal SOC curves according to different trip information.
After getting the average speed and length of route segments
when the trip starts, the neural network module is used to
generate a reasonable and relatively precise SOC reference
curve. Finally, a fuzzy logic controller was designed to
follow the trend of SOC reference curve. The fuzzy rules
and control commands extracted from the optimal results are
Fig. 1. PHECB power-train configuration.
from different driving cycles. The main contribution of this
paper is that the effectiveness of battery energy planning by
comprehensively considering the future partial trip information
and historical optimal SOC curves is verified, which provides
a new perspective for real vehicle energy management.
This paper is organized as follows: Section II provides
the power-train model of PHECB; Section III formulates and
solves the global energy management problem; Section IV
presents the proposed strategy step by step and shows the
control results; Section V concludes the paper.
II. P OWER -T RAIN M ODEL OF PHECB
The configuration of the PHECB power-train is a single-
shaft parallel hybrid system shown in Fig. 1, which contains
the diesel engine, integrated starter generator (ISG), clutch,
drive motor (DM), LiFePO4 battery and final drive. PHECB
can work in the EV mode, engine mode, hybrid mode or brake
mode. Engine speed determines the engagement and disen-
gagement of the clutch. The disengagement of the clutch, only
DM can supply power to wheels. At this point, the bus works
in the EV mode. The engagement of the clutch, the diesel
engine can provide all the power demand of the bus through
the single-shaft to wheels. At this time, the bus works in
the engine mode. If the engine and DM both supply power
to wheels, the bus is operating in the hybrid mode. In this
situation, the DM output power can be positive or negative.
Table I shows the component characteristics of the PHECB
power-train. In this research, our goal is to reduce the fuel
consumption of PHECB. So the dynamics of power-train
components such as the diesel engine and electric machine
are ignored. The simulation only uses the steady-state models.
The detailed power-train component models are presented in
the following.
Diesel engine: The fuel consumption rate of the diesel
engine is determined by the engine power Pe and engine speed
ωe as follows:
m f = f (Pe , ωe ) (1)
Due to the highly nonlinear property of f , it is tough to
obtain a analytical function of the three variables. Therefore,
an experiment on the dynamometer was carried out to get the
steady-state fuel consumption map, which is shown in Fig. 2.
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TIAN et al.: AFL ENERGY MANAGEMENT STRATEGY BASED ON REASONABLE SOC REFERENCE CURVE FOR ONLINE CONTROL OF PHECB 3

TABLE I
BASIC PARAMETERS OF THE PHECB P OWER -T RAIN

Fig. 2. Engine fuel consumption map.

Electric machine: Both the ISG and DM can work as the

motor or generator. The pre-set rules determine the ISG and
DM work mode selection. For example, how to allocate brake
energy between ISG and DM when the vehicle operates in the
brake mode. Each of the control methods listed in our article
follows these pre-set rules. The power of the ISG and DM can
be written as following:

TM ω M /η M , motor
PM = (2)
TM ω M η M , gener ator
where PM is the electric machine power, TM is the electric
machine torque, η M is the electric machine efficiency. Fig. 3 Fig. 3. Electric machine efficiency map. (a) ISG efficiency map. (a) ISG
efficiency map.
shows the efficiency map of ISG and DM.
Battery: LiFePO4 batteries are recommended for PHECBs
usage owing to their excellent safety property and long cycling
drag coefficient, A is the frontal area of the PHECB, ρd is
life. Several representative models of LiFePO4 batteries are
the air density, V and δ is the vehicle speed and correction
shown and analyzed in paper [35]. Among them, the Ri nt
coefficient of rotating mass, respectively. Table II presents the
model is of enough precision and suitable complexity. The
main parameters of the studied PHECB.
battery SOC can be written as:

III. G LOBAL O PTIMAL E NERGY
1 VOC − VOC − 4Pbat Rbat
2
d S OC
=− (3) M ANAGEMENT S TRATEGY
dt Q bat 2Rbat
A. Optimization Problem Formulation
where d S OC/dt is the change rate of SOC, Q bat is the battery
capacity, VOC is the battery open-circuit voltage, Pbat is the The objective is to minimize the fuel consumption of
output power of battery pack, Rbat is the internal resistance PHECB over the given driving cycles, which can be expressed
of the battery. as an optimization problem:
 tf
Vehicle: Only the longitudinal dynamics of the vehicle is
considered for fuel consumption, which can be presented as J = mi n m f (u(t)) (5)
t0
follows:
where J is the fuel consumption, [t0 , t f ] is the optimization
1 dV
Ft = mg f r cos θ + C D Aρd V 2 + mg sin θ + δm (4) horizon, m f is the fuel rate, u(t) is the control variable. As can
2 dt be seen in Equation 1 that Pe influences the fuel consumption.
where Ft is the force on the wheel to drive the vehicle, m Because battery output power Pbat determines Pe to meet
is the vehicle mass, g is the gravity acceleration, fr is the the vehicle power demand, Pbat is chosen as the control
rolling resistance, θ is the road slope angle, C D is the air variable during the PMP calculation process. The relationship
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

TABLE II
BASIC PARAMETERS OF PHECB M ODEL

of Pe and Pbat when PHECB working in the hybrid mode can

be expressed as follows:

Pe + Pbat η M , Pbat ≥ 0
Pdmd = (6)
Pe + Pbat /η M , Pbat < 0
where Pdmd is the driver demand power, η M is the electric
machine efficiency.
Battery SOC is the state variable chosen for energy man-
agement problem because other components dynamics change
faster [36]. The initial and final battery SOC for a given bus
route is determined:

S OC(t0 ) = S OC0
(7) Fig. 4. The calculation process of PMP.
S OC(t f ) = S OC f
In the process of solving the optimization problem, some
component constraints should be considered: This research assumes the co-state is invariant during the
⎧ calculation process for simplicity. Although the battery open-
⎪
⎪ ωemin ≤ ωe ≤ ωemax circuit voltage VOC and internal resistance Rbat depend on
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 0 ≤ Pe ≤ Pemax SOC, their variations are typically limited. Therefore, the co-
⎪
⎪
⎨P state variation is minuscule and sometimes can be completely
I SGmin ≤ PI SG ≤ PI SGmax
(8) neglected [37]. The co-state’s small change can also be noticed
⎪
⎪ P ≤ P ≤ P
⎪
⎪
D Mmin D M D Mmax
in the results shown in [16].
⎪
⎪ S OCmin ≤ S OC ≤ S OCmax
⎪
⎪ The problem formulated in this study is a two-point bound-
⎩
−Ibat Cmax ≤ Ibat ≤ Ibat Dmax ary value optimization problem because the initial and final
where ωe is the engine speed, Pe , PI SG and PD M is the diesel values of battery SOC is pre-determined. This issue can be
engine, ISG and DM output power, respectively. The subscript numerically solved by the shooting method. Fig. 4 shows the
“max” and “min” denote the maximum and minimum values calculation process of PMP.
of each variable. Ibat is the charge-discharge current of battery,
Ibat Dmax is the maximum battery discharge current, Ibat Cmax C. The Optimal Control Results
is the maximum charge current. Both the real-world driving cycle getting from the remote
monitoring system and China bus driving cycle are chosen
B. Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle to Solve the for simulation because the two driving cycles can represent
Optimization Problem typical characteristics of China city bus routes. The China bus
To solve the constrained optimization problem using PMP, driving cycle is repeated three times to use up all the electric
the Hamiltonian function is first formulated as: energy available at the end of the trip. Fig. 5 presents the speed
d S OC profiles and power demand profiles of the two driving cycles.
H (u(t), S OC(t), λ(t)) = m f (u(t)) + λ(t) (9) The optimal control results of the two driving cycles
dt
where λ(t) is the co-state, d S OC/dt is given by Equation 3. can then be obtained, including Pe , PI SG , PD M , Pbat and
The optimal control sequence u ∗ (t) should minimize the SOC curves. Here in this part, the authors only present the
Hamiltonian function at each time step: optimal SOC curves of the two driving cycles. Fig. 6 shows
the optimal SOC curves under the two driving cycles with the
H (u ∗(t), S OC ∗ (t), λ∗ (t)) ≤ H (u(t), S OC(t), λ(t)) (10) initial SOC from 100% to 30% with 10% decrement for the
The state equation of λ(t) is given by: succeeding step. As shown in the figure, when the initial SOC
is high, the battery energy tend to deplete linearly and reach
˙
˙ = − ∂ H (u(t), S OC(t), λ(t)) = −λ ∂ S OC
λ(t) (11) the low threshold at the end of driving cycle. However, if the
∂ S OC ∂ S OC initial SOC is low, the patterns of optimal SOC curves are
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TIAN et al.: AFL ENERGY MANAGEMENT STRATEGY BASED ON REASONABLE SOC REFERENCE CURVE FOR ONLINE CONTROL OF PHECB 5

Fig. 6. Optimal battery SOC curves under two driving cycles. (a) The China
Fig. 5. Speed and power demand profiles of the two driving cycles. (a) The bus driving cycle. (b) The real world driving cycle.
China bus driving cycle. (b) The real world driving cycle.

much more complicated. This phenomenon can be seen clearly

in the real world driving cycle. The features enlighten the
author’s idea of planning battery energy through partial trip
information and optimal data.

IV. T HE R EALIZATION OF A DAPTIVE F UZZY L OGIC

E NERGY M ANAGEMENT S TRATEGY
A. A Novel Method to Generate a Reasonable SOC
Reference Curve
In the real world control of PHEVs, it is unlikely to get
the detailed future trip information. However, ITS helps get
the future average speed of route segments. Besides, the nav-
igation system can be used to obtain route segments length.
Then authors consider whether there are relationships between
average speed, route segments length and optimal SOC curves.
The research assumes the China bus driving cycle and the
real world driving cycle have already been randomly divided
into six pieces and seven pieces, respectively. The length of
each segment is around 2-5 kilometers. ITS and navigation
system equip every PHECBs to get the average speed and
the length of each route segments. Fig. 7 shows relationships
between the average speed of route segments and optimal SOC
curves. The red horizontal lines indicate the average speed Fig. 7. The relationships between average speed and optimal control results.
of the route segments, and the red vertical lines display the (a) The China bus driving cycle. (b) The real world driving cycle.
boundaries of route segments. As to each segment, if the initial
battery SOC is high, the optimal SOC decline faster to use SOC curves show much more sophisticated features with the
more electricity. If the average speed is high, the optimal SOC increasing of distance traveled and low initial SOCs. It is
drops much slower or even increase. Moreover, the optimal tough to quantitatively describe the relationships between these
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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

Fig. 9. Learning curve of the neural network.

Fig. 8. Neural network structure.

parameters and optimal SOC curves. Therefore, we consider

using a neural network (NN) module to learn the mechanisms
of these input variables and optimal SOC curves. If we can
get a reasonable reference SOC curve at the beginning of
the driving cycle, the difficulty of energy management can
be dramatically reduced.
Fig. 8 shows the neural network module structure. It con-
tains four input variables, one hidden layer, and one output
variable. The four input variables including the initial SOC,
average speed of each segment Va , remaining length percent
L l , and current segment length percent L p . The L l and L p is
defined as follows:
Lr
Ll =
L t ot al
Ls
Lp =
L t ot al
where L r is the remaining length, L s , L t ot al is the current
segment length and total trip distance, respectively. The pri-
mary role of L l is to plan the battery energy level and to
ensure SOC maintain 30% at the end of the trip. The only
NN module output variable is the battery SOC at the end of
each segment.
The training performance is measured by mean square
error (MSE) defined as follows:
1
N
MSE = (S OCend (i ) − S OCt ar (i ))2
N S OCre f (i ) = S OCst art −
i=1
where N is the train epoch, S OCend (i ) is the output of NN
module, S OCt ar (i ) is the target SOC.
Transfer functions calculate a layer’s output from its net
input. The transfer function is defined as follows:
2 determined by simulation results shown in Fig. 11. The X axis
f (x) = −1
1 + e−2x
The Bayesian regularization back-propagation training
method is used to update the weight and bias values according
to the Levenberg-Marquardt optimization. Validation stops are
disabled (val fail = 0) so that the training can continue until an
optimal combination of errors and weights determined. Fig. 9
shows the learning curve of the neural network. The best MSE
Fig. 10. Training state of the neural network.
(12) achieved is 0.00039056 at epoch 181. Fig. 10 presents the
training state of the neural network.
(13) At the beginning of each trip, after getting the average
speed and length of route segments, total trip length from ITS
and navigation system, the neural network can give a rough
SOC outline. The end SOC of the first segment is also the
initial SOC of the second part. Because each segment lacks
detailed trip information, nothing can be determined within
each segment. The neural network only plans the macroscopic
battery energy level. To obtain a integrated SOC reference
curve, the authors assume the battery SOC linearly changes
with the traveled distance within each segment, which can be
written as:
(14) L T (i )
(S OCst art − S OCend ) (16)
Ls
where S OCst art and S OCend is the start and end SOC of
each segment, L T (i ) is the traveled distance, L s is the road
segment length. At this point, the novel method to generate
the reasonable SOC reference curve has been presented.
The reason why each segment around 2-5 kilometers is
(15)
is the route segment length. The Y axis is the evaluation
index (EI), which is defined as follows:
1
T
EI = ( (S OCre f (i ) − S OCopt (i ))2 ) (17)
T
i=1
where T is the total time of driving cycle, S OCre f (i ) is
the reference SOC got from our method, S OCopt (i ) is the
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TIAN et al.: AFL ENERGY MANAGEMENT STRATEGY BASED ON REASONABLE SOC REFERENCE CURVE FOR ONLINE CONTROL OF PHECB 7

Fig. 11. Route segment length determinate.

Fig. 13. Membership functions of two input variables and one output variable.

TABLE III
F UZZY RULES

Fig. 12. PMP engine output power.

optimal SOC obtained from PMP. As depicts in the figure,

if the route segment length is long, the relatively high EI will
lead to a larger error. If the route segment length is short,
the training data of neural network will increase. To make
a balance while also consider the actual ability of ITS, each
segment of 2-5 kilometers is a good choice.

B. Adaptive Fuzzy Logic Energy Management Strategy

In this part, the authors first plot all the engine output power
under the two driving cycles using PMP. As shown in Fig. 12,
the two blue envelopes represent the maximum and minimum
engine output power under different engine speeds. The red
line is the optimal engine output power getting from the engine
fuel consumption map. If the engine speed is low, the red line
almost locates in the middle of the two blue lines. However,
the optimal engine output power gradually moves up with the
increase of engine speeds. The phenomenon is chosen as the
first criterion. Since the reasonable SOC reference curve has
obtained, the controller only needs to determine the engine
output power to follow the SOC reference curve. Therefore,
the SOC deviation is chosen as the second criterion. The SOC
deviation S OC is defined as follows:
S OC = S OC(i ) − S OCre f (i )
where S OC(i ) is the real SOC, S OCre f (i ) is the reference
SOC.
The fuzzy logic has two input variables and one output
variable. The first input variable is vehicle speed. Because
Fig. 14. The output surface of fuzzy logic controller.
in the hybrid mode, the engine speed is proportional to the
vehicle speed. The scale factor is determined by the final drive
and wheel radius. The second input variable is S OC. The
degree of engine output power Pα is chosen as the output
variable. Fig. 13 shows the membership functions of fuzzy
logic input variables and output variable, which is determined
by comparing the results of different membership functions
such as Gaussian-type and Sigmoid-type. The VL, VM, and
(18) VH represent the low, medium and high vehicle speed. The
DL, DM, and DH represent the low, medium and high S OC.
The L, ML, MH, and H represent the low, medium-low,
medium-high and high Pα , respectively. Table III lists the rules
of the fuzzy logic. Fig. 14 shows the output surface of the
fuzzy logic.
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8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

TABLE IV
C ONTROL R ESULTS OF D IFFERENT E NERGY M ANAGEMENT S TRATEGIES

The fuzzy logic controller is used in the hybrid mode where

S OC is in a certain range. The engine output power is
determined as follows:
Pe = Pelow + Pα (Pehigh − Pelow ) (19)
where Pe is the engine output power, Pelow and Pehigh are
the values of minimum and maximum blue envelopes shown
in Fig. 12.
The SOC deviation is one of the input variables of the fuzzy
logic controller, and the NN module to generate the SOC
reference curve can be trained by different driving cycles with
different battery SOCs. These two reasons make the proposed
energy management strategy adaptable.

C. Control Results Analysis of the Trained Cycle

The fuel consumption of the proposed adaptive fuzzy
logic (AFL) strategy is compared with that of PMP and
CDCS. And CDCS is chosen as the benchmark strategy for
comparison. Table IV lists the fuel consumption of different
strategies. As shown in the table, PMP achieves the lowest
fuel consumption. When compared to CDCS, the fuel con-
sumption decrement is ranging from 7.68% to 15.08% under
the China bus driving cycle and 9.61% to 17.48% under
the real world driving cycle. For AFL energy management
strategy, the control performance is worse than PMP but much
better than CDCS. The fuel consumption decrement is ranging Fig. 15. The SOC curves using different control strategies under the real
from 5.00% to 13.49% under the China bus driving cycle and world driving cycle. (a) Initial SOC is 100%. (b) Initial SOC is 30%.
5.72% to 11.90% under the real world driving cycle.
Fig. 15 shows the SOC curve differences resulting from TABLE V
different control strategies under the real world driving cycle C ALCULATION T IME OF D IFFERENT S TRATEGIES W ITH
THE I NITIAL SOC OF 100% AND 30%
with the initial SOC of 100% and 30%, respectively. The
SOC of AFL control strategy closely follows the trend of the
reference curve. Due to the detailed trip information in each
segment is unknown, the SOC reference curve is not always
similar to the optimal one, especially when the initial SOC is
low. To verify the feasibility of the proposed strategy for online
application, Table V lists the simulation calculation time of the
entire cycle using different control strategies. The simulation why the AFL fuel consumption is much lower than CDCS,
is carried out on a laptop with 8 GB RAM and 2.3 GHz of the authors plot the DM and engine working points of the
i5 processor. The computational time of the three strategies is two strategies. The ISG is mainly used to start the engine and
quite similar. It should be noted that the PMP calculation time to recover braking energy to the battery. So the ISG working
is obtained with the predetermined optimal co-state. points are not plotted because of the small differences between
The AFL control strategy can be used online efficiently, and the two strategies. AFL and CDCS have the same DM working
the control performance is much better than CDCS. To explain points when the DM speed lower than 650 rpm or when the bus
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TIAN et al.: AFL ENERGY MANAGEMENT STRATEGY BASED ON REASONABLE SOC REFERENCE CURVE FOR ONLINE CONTROL OF PHECB
Fig. 16. Real world driving cycle with an initial SOC of 100%. (a) Drive
motor working points. (b) Engine working points.
TABLE VI
C ONTROL R ESULTS OF AFL F OLLOWING D IFFERENT
SOC R EFERENCE C URVES
enter the brake mode. Therefore, these DM working points are
not presented. As shown in Fig. 16 and Fig. 17, no matter the
initial SOC is high or low, the AFL’s DM and engine working
points mostly locate in the high-efficiency region. That is why
the proposed control strategy can reduce the fuel consumption
compared with CDCS.
To verify the effectiveness of the proposed SOC generation
method, Table VI lists the control results of the AFL following
different SOC reference curves under the real world driving
cycle with the initial SOC of 30%. The first SOC curve is the
totally linearly SOC curve. The second SOC curve is generated
by our method. The third SOC curve is the optimal SOC
curve obtained by PMP. The results indicate that the proposed
SOC generating method can achieve 1.64% fuel consumption
decrement compared with the totally linearly SOC reference
curve. But the fuel consumption result of the proposed SOC
generating method is 0.99% higher than following the optimal
SOC curve. Since the detailed trip information is unavailable
at the current stage, the assumption of SOC linearly decreases
with the distance traveled in each segment is a practical choice.
9
Fig. 17. Real world driving cycle with an initial SOC of 30%. (a) Drive
motor working points. (b) Engine working points.
Fig. 18. The average speed and route segment length of the new cycle.
D. Control Results Analysis of the Untrained Cycle
The new driving cycle whose optimal results are not used
to train the neural network is conducted to validate the robust
of the proposed energy management strategy. Fig. 18 shows
the average speed and route segment length of the new cycle.
The cycle is divided into six pieces. Each segment length is
between 2-5 km.
Table VII lists the control results under the new driving
cycle with the initial SOC of 80%. Although the new cycle
is entirely untrained, AFL still achieves 4.61% fuel savings
compared with CDCS. Fig. 19 shows the SOC curves under
the new driving cycle with the initial SOC of 80%. Because
optimal results of the new driving cycle are not used to train
the neural network module, there is a larger deviation between
the AFL SOC curve and the optimal SOC curve compared
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
10
TABLE VII
C ONTROL R ESULTS OF D IFFERENT S TRATEGIES
Fig. 19. The SOC curves under the new cycle with the initial SOC of 80%.
with the trained driving cycle. However, the battery energy
planning is still desirable compared with that of CDCS.
V. C ONCLUSION
This paper proposed a novel adaptive fuzzy logic energy
management strategy based on the reasonable SOC reference
curve for online control of plug-in hybrid electric city bus.
To reduce the complexity of energy management, we put
forward a neural network module trained by historical driving
cycles to generate a reasonable SOC reference curve at the
beginning of the trip using the average speed and length of
route segments got from ITS and navigation system. After
getting the SOC reference curve, the fuzzy logic was used
to follow the trend of the SOC reference curve according
to the deviation of SOC and vehicle speed to determine the
degree of engine output powers. The proposed control strategy
can be used online efficiently. Furthermore, the results of
fuel consumption show that the adaptive fuzzy logic control
strategy is much better than CDCS. The decrement of the
fuel consumption is ranging from 4.61% to 13.49% under the
trained and untrained driving cycles.
Our future work will focus on further improving the control
performance of the proposed energy management strategy.
Besides, more typical driving cycles can be used to train the
neural network module, therefore enhancing the applicability
of the proposed method.
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TIAN et al.: AFL ENERGY MANAGEMENT STRATEGY BASED ON REASONABLE SOC REFERENCE CURVE FOR ONLINE CONTROL OF PHECB 11

[25] Y. He, M. Chowdhury, P. Pisu, and Y. Ma, “An energy optimization Xu Wang received the B.Eng. degree from Tsinghua
strategy for power-split drivetrain plug-in hybrid electric vehicles,” University, Beijing, China, in 2015, where he is
Transp. Res. C, Emerg. Technol., vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 29–41, Jun. 2012. currently pursuing the M.Eng. degree with the State
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adaptive-ECMS for hybrid electric vehicles,” Energy Procedia, vol. 75, His research focuses on the design of energy
pp. 1907–1912, Aug. 2015. management strategies for plug-in hybrid electric
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pp. 031012-1–031012-9, Mar. 2011.

Guangyu Tian received the B.Eng. degree from

Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1986,
He Tian received the B.Eng. degree from the Hefei the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Auto-
University of Technology, Hefei, China, in 2012. He motive Engineering, Tsinghua University, in 1995.
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the State From 2004 to2005, he was a Researcher with the
Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, University of Technology of Belfort-Montbliard,
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. France. Since 2009, he has been a Professor with
His research interests include energy management the State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and
strategy for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and Energy, Tsinghua University. He is also the Secretary
vehicle intelligent control. General of the Electric Vehicles Committee, SAE-
China.
His research include electric vehicle integration and control, automatic
transmission, motor control and battery system application technology.