The 2nd Joint International Conference on “Sustainable Energy and Environment (SEE 2006)”

A-034 (O) 21-23 November 2006, Bangkok, Thailand

Power Management Strategy for Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Masoud Aliakbar Golkar* and Amin Hajizadeh

Electrical Engineering Department , K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran-Iran

Abstract: The control strategies for hybrid electric vehicle are algorithms that choose the power split between Internal Combustion
Engine (ICE) and electric motor. The fuzzy logic controller is realized to satisfy the controller objectives; improvement on the drive
ability of vehicle, battery charge balance and reduction of emissions. The decision-making of fuzzy logic controller is useful to
nonlinear and uncertain system such as hybrid electric vehicle applications, and the fuzzy logic controller has an immune property to
various vehicle load and road conditions.
Many challenges exist for designing a vehicle system controller for a PHEV. For one thing, the vehicle consists of many large
subsystems. In addition to being non-linear and often time varying, each subsystem also has its own controller.
Given this complexity, intelligent control structure has been developed based on fuzzy logic. Fuzzy Logic Control is very suitable for
hybrid vehicle control. It is a reliable method for realizing and optimal trade-off between the efficiencies of all components of the
PHEV, and also very robust, because of it’s tolerability to imprecise measurement and component variability.
In this study, first operational modes of hybrid electric vehicle has been determined, then by using the proper strategy, the engine
operation is set on it’s peak efficiency in order to maximize fuel economy and minimize emissions.

Keywords: Hybrid Electric Vehicle, Fuzzy Logic Controller, Reduction of Emissions, Intelligent Strategy, Rule-based Strategy

1. INTRODUCTION

The population in the world is growing and also the number of people that can afford a car. One of our biggest environmental
problems to solve in the future is to avoid a huge increase in environmental pollutions and the greenhouse effect. Many new ideas
and concepts need to be developed, because vehicles driven by fossil fuel are one of the largest contributors to today's air pollution.
Above all, electric vehicles have stood in the spotlight all over the world in recent years. However, as pure electric vehicle have
demerits, such as a short driving distance, long recharging time, and high cost, these are not thought to be a realistic solution for
urban air pollution at the present time. Thus, hybrid electric vehicles (HEV’s), which have a longer driving distance and higher
transportation capability than pure electric vehicles, can be offered as a best choice for a solution to low-emission vehicles [1,2].
HEVs offer the potential to considerably increase the fuel economy of a vehicle, while reducing the overall emissions of a
conventional powertrain. Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) are HEVs configured such that the electric motor powertrain and
the conventional powertrain can provide tractive power to the drive wheels simultaneously [2].
This dual source system can request the necessary power supply from two different power sources, with specific operational
characteristics and requirements.
Power management strategies for HEV's can be roughly classified into three categories. The first type employs heuristic control
techniques such as rule-based strategy [3] and intelligent strategy [2]. These strategies can offer a significant improvement in energy
efficiency and are suitable for real-time control strategy that can be used to control a vehicle.
The second approach is based on static optimization methods. Commonly, electric power is translated into an equivalent amount
of (steady-state) fuel rate in order to calculate the overall fuel cost [4]. The optimization scheme then figures out the proper split
between the two energy sources using steady-state efficiency maps. Because of the simple point wise optimization nature, it is
possible to extend such optimization schemes to solve the simultaneous fuel economy and emission optimization problem. Static
approaches are based mainly on the Equivalent fuel Consumption Minimization Strategy (ECMS), which can be adapted to also
consider battery SOC and emissions constraints. One of the drawbacks of the static approach is that some important dynamic effects,
such as those related to drivability and battery SOC variations, cannot be explicitly treated [5-6].
The basic idea of the third type of HEV control algorithms considers the dynamic nature of the system when performing the
optimization. Furthermore, the optimization is with respect to a time horizon, rather than for an instant in time. In general, power split
algorithms resulting from dynamic optimization approaches are more accurate under transient conditions, but are computationally
more intensive. The dynamic optimization policy is not implementable in real driving conditions because it requires knowledge of
future speed and load profile [7-8].
Many challenges exist for designing a vehicle system controller for a PHEV. For one thing, the vehicle consists of many large
subsystems. In addition to being non-linear and often time varying, each subsystem also has its own controller.
Given this complexity, intelligent control structure has been developed based on fuzzy logic. Fuzzy Logic Control is very suitable
for hybrid vehicle control. It is a reliable method for realizing and optimal trade-off between the efficiencies of all components of the
PHEV, and also very robust, because of it’s tolerability to imprecise measurement and component variability [2, 9].
In this paper, intelligent hierarchical control strategy has been developed for PHEV. A common method to control of the complex
dynamic systems with many uncertainties is designing some different of local controllers each for a specific operating area or
determined objects and then designing of a switching strategy through the subsystems to achieve the global objectives of the system.
Hierarchical controller represents a high-level vehicle control system that can coordinate the overall powertrain to satisfy certain
performance target such as fuel economy and emissions reduction.

2. OPERATING MODES OF HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLES AND SWITCHING STRATEGY

In order to simulate the energy flows during arbitrary maneuvers, the proposed model accounts for the following working modes:

Corresponding author: Golkar@eetd.kntu.ac.ir

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 The 2nd Joint International Conference on “Sustainable Energy and Environment (SEE 2006)”
A-034 (O) 21-23 November 2006, Bangkok, Thailand

- Electric mode: the traction torque is provided only by the electric motor while the engine is switched off.
- Hybrid mode: the electric motor assists the engine during the traction by providing an additional torque.
- Recharging mode: the engine provides the torque for both vehicle traction and battery recharge.
- Regenerative braking: during vehicle deceleration (either braking or motored) the electric motor works as a generator for the battery
recharging by converting the vehicle kinetic energy into electrical energy [9].
For controller analysis and design, the ADVISOR models [6] are used to simulate the PHEV in the Matlab/Simulink
environment. The control structure of the presented method is shown in Fig.1.

Fig. 1 Vehicle system controller for PHEV

A finite state machine is a representation of an event-driven (reactive) system. In an event-driven system, the system makes a
transition from one state to another prescribed state, provided that the condition defining the change is true [2,9]. Stateflow uses a
variant of the finite state machine notation established by Harel [11]. Using Stateflow in simulink environment, you can create
Stateflow diagrams. A Stateflow diagram is a graphical representation of a finite state machine, where states and transitions form the
basic building blocks of the system. The state machine portion of the vehicle system controller (VSC) is responsible for determining
the operating mode of the vehicle. As a first step in identifying the states for the state machine, the sets of a all possible operating
modes for each subsystem were listed. For instance, for the engine, the possible operating modes are engine on and engine off. To
construct the proper switching strategy, transition conditions between these operating modes must be determined. Many parameters
make decisions to select operation mode such as fuel converter off period , the value of state of charge (SOC), charge sustain, bus
power required, negative incoming energy, maximum power of ESS, the minimum power commanded of the fuel converter, ... are
used. For example, the engine may be turned on if the average of engine power commanded in 5 seconds (with respect to the power
which is required to correction SOC) gets high enough, also the shortest allowed duration of engine -off period is 3 minutes in this
process. This causes that avoid changing the situation of engine repetitive. After this time has passed, the engine may restart if high
enough powers are required by the bus. Also the value of SOC is as another index to order ICE gets on. For this purpose, the average
of the highest and lowest desired battery state of charge (cs-hi-soc, cs-lo-soc) is as index for decision. The engine may be turned on if
the SOC gets too low (recharge mode). However at this point of decision, the other main index is the bus power required which refers
the required net power from the bus (bus_pwr-req). If it becomes negative, it shows that the system operates in regeneration mode.
This situation may be a good condition to compensate the SOC of battery. In addition, it is noticeable that the difference of the bus
power required and the maximum charge of ESS must be higher than the minimum power commanded of the engine. When the
engine is on, its power output tends to follow the power required by the bus, accounting for losses in the generator so that the
generator power output matches the bus power requirement.

3. POWER MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

In particular, management of energy and distribution of torque (power) are essential elements in the implementation of hybrid
electric vehicles, where each power source must be used according to driver demand and the specific features of the driving situation.
Since fuel economy and emissions as well as battery usage are primary factors to be considered in the operation of hybrid vehicles,
development of energy management strategy for this class vehicles has received a great deal of attention.
In this paper the proposed controller for energy management in parallel hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), is mainly composed of
three parts such as driver’s intention predictor (DIP), driver’s torque computation (DTC) and the engine torque controller (ETC) as
shown in Fig.2.

Fig. 2 Proposed layout for energy management in PHEV

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 The 2nd Joint International Conference on “Sustainable Energy and Environment (SEE 2006)”
A-034 (O) 21-23 November 2006, Bangkok, Thailand

3.1 Driver’s intention predictor (DIP)

The DIP is introduced in this fuzzy logic controller to enhance the drivability of this vehicle. The output of DIP can be considered
as the demanded torque reference satisfying the driver’s acceleration/deceleration reflected in acceleration pedal stroke and its rate.
Since the driver’s intention is reflected on the acceleration pedal stroke, Acc and its rate, ∆Acc, using these values as inputs of the
DIP, the demanded torque reference proper to the driver’s accelerating/decelerating intention can be produced. The input and output
membership functions for the DIP are shown in Fig. 3, where Acc is normalized from 0 to 1 and ∆Acc is from -1 to 1. The driver’s
intention is normalized from -1 to 1.

3.2 Driver's torque computation (DTC)

The second block in energy management strategy converts driver’s intention to road load. For this purpose the maximum available
torque is computed by adding the maximum available engine and electric motor torque. The maximum available engine and electric
motor torque depend on the instantaneous speed of engine/electric motor and are computed by using the efficiency map of each
component. Then, driver’s intention multiplies by the maximum available torque. The positive part of torque is road load and
negative part is braking torque which implies to braking controller.

Fig. 3 Input and output membership functions of DIP

3.3 Engine torque controller (ETC)

In PHEV one of the primary goals is to set the engine operation in its peak efficiency region. This improves the overall efficiency
of the powertrain. The ICE operation is set according to the road load and the battery state of charge (SOC). This strategy is used to
run the IC engine about it's peak efficiency region. In this strategy, the operating points of the IC engine are set near the torque region,
where efficiency is the maximum for that particular engine speed. Since an electric motor (EM) is available to load-level, the HEV
can use its electric machine to force the engine to operate in a region that consumes less fuel, while maintaining the state of charge
(SOC) of the battery pack over the majority of the drive cycle. This is achieved by using the electric motor to compensate for the
dearth in torque required to meet the road load. Load leveling has to be done, to meet the total driveline torque request, and to
prevent unnecessary charges or discharges of the battery pack. Due to the highly nonlinear, time varying nature of the plant, the
control strategy will be implemented with the use of a fuzzy logic controller (FLC). The FLC will use two inputs: the battery pack
SOC and the road load. Based on the above inputs, the ICE operating point is set. Along the simulation, in the reverse loop, the
desired electric motor torque is calculated from the following equation:

TEM_Desired = TLOAD - TICE_Set (1)

where TLOAD is the load required from the drive cycle due to acceleration, drag, road grade, etc., and TICE_Set is the desired output
torque of the ICE. The controller outputs the change of the throttle command. The input and output membership functions for the
ETC are shown in Fig. 4, where SOC and Road Load are normalized from 1 to 11.

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 The 2nd Joint International Conference on “Sustainable Energy and Environment (SEE 2006)”
A-034 (O) 21-23 November 2006, Bangkok, Thailand

Fig. 4 Input and output membership functions of ETC

4. SIMULATION RESULTS

In this section, we present the simulation study on the evaluation of proposed energy management system of a parallel HEV.
Computational simulation works were performed on the EPA Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS) that shown in Fig.5.

Fig. 5 UDDS driving cycle

A typical parallel hybrid powertrain in ADVISOR environment were constructed for simulation study. Fig.9. shows the vehicle
system controller for parallel structure of HEV in ADVISOR environment. The basic parallel vehicle components include an engine,
batteries, and a motor. The motor can act in reverse as a generator for braking and to charge the batteries. The default gearbox is a 5
speed.
To demonstrate our control algorithm considering efficiency and emissions, a sample small parallel HEV with the following
parameters is chosen(Table. II). All the data are taken from existing sources in the ADVISOR software [6]. The various parameters
for the control strategy are entered as variables and are implemented in Simulink blocks. Static maps for efficiency and emissions of
the ICE are used.
The battery’s state of charge and current are shown in Fig. 6. When current is positive, battery is discharging and when negative,
battery is charging. Of all the components in a hybrid vehicle, batteries are probably the most difficult to understand and model.
Although batteries seem to act like simple electrical energy storage devices, when they deliver and accept energy, they actually
undergo thermally-dependent electrochemical processes that make them difficult to model. We use RC battery model [6] in this
simulation.

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A-034 (O) 21-23 November 2006, Bangkok, Thailand

Fig. 6 Battery’s state of charge and current

Fig. 7 Vehicle speed, ICE torque and driver’s intention

5. CONCLUSION

In this paper, a new approach for power management of PHEV has been presented. For this purpose a finite state machine
structure for engine control introduced. Then two fuzzy logic controllers for optimal setting of ICE torque and vehicle drivability
keeping have been used. The simulation results show the proposed control strategy is really adaptive under any change in driving
cycle and uncertainty in plant dynamics. The emission and fuel consumption results show that this control strategy is so effective for
implementation in real driving cycle.

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A-034 (O) 21-23 November 2006, Bangkok, Thailand

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