International Journal of Automotive Technology, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp.

645−654 (2014) Copyright © 2014 KSAE/ 078−14

DOI 10.1007/s12239−014−0067−x pISSN 1229−9138/ eISSN 1976−3832

COMBINED POWER MANAGEMENT/DESIGN OPTIMIZATION FOR A

FUEL CELL/BATTERY PLUG-IN HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLE
USING MULTI-OBJECTIVE PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION

B. GENG1), J. K. MILLS2) and D. SUN1)*

1)
Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee
Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
2)
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King’s College Rd,
M5S 3G8, Canada

(Received 29 March 2013; Revised 13 August 2013; Accepted 21 August 2013)

ABSTRACT−In this paper, the combined power management/design optimization problem is investigated for a fuel cell/Li-
ion battery PHEV. Formulated as a constrained multi-objective optimization problem (MOP), the combined optimization
problem simultaneously minimizes the vehicle cost and fuel consumption subject to the vehicle performance requirements.
With an emphasis on developing a generic optimization algorithm to find the Pareto front for the synthesized MOP, the Pareto
based multi-objective particle swarm optimization (PMOPSO) algorithm is developed, which solely depends on the concept
of Pareto dominance. Three approaches are introduced to the PMOPSO method to address the constrained MOP. They are: (i)
by incorporating system constraints in the original objective functions, the constrained MOP is transformed to an
unconstrained MOP; (ii) to avoid being trapped in local minima, a disturbance operator with a decaying mutation possibility
is introduced; (iii) to generate a sparsely distributed Pareto front, the concept of crowding distance is utilized to determine the
global guidance for the particles. Finally, under the Matlab/Simulink software environment, simulation results are presented
to demonstrate the effectiveness of the PMOPSO in the derivation of the true Pareto front.

KEY WORDS : Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, Multi-objective optimization, Particle swarm optimization, Fuel cell,
Component sizing, Power management

1. INTRODUCTION in general, is hybridized with an energy storage system

With the continuing depletion of the world’s fossil oil
reserve and growing public awareness of environmental
protection, investigations of alternative vehicular powertrain
propulsion system have emerged as an important research
topic in the automobile industry. The proton exchange
membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has shown its potential as a
primary power source in the propulsion system due to its
merits of high energy efficiency, low operating temperature
and zero greenhouse gas emissions. During the past few
years, several leading automobile manufacturers have
produced different types of light-weight vehicles and buses
(Wang et al., 2011), such as Honda FCX-3, Ford Demo IIa
and Mercedes-Benz Citaro fuel cell bus.
However, at the current stage, the PEMFC still suffers
from several technical barriers especially in terms of its
short lifetime. To prolong the lifetime of the PEMFC, the
PEMFC cannot be used to track fast dynamic power
transients. Therefore, in a fuel cell powertrain, the PEMFC,
*Corresponding author. e-mail: medsun@cityu.edu.hk
which is used to meet the dynamic vehicle power demand
so as to reduce rapid changes in the PEMFC power flow.
Typically, energy storage systems include battery stacks
or supercapacitors (Jin et al., 2008), or a combination of
both (Liu et al., 2011). In particular, because of the
advantages of high power/energy density and long cycle
times, Li-ion battery stacks are commonly used as auxiliary
power sources in the fuel cell hybrid powertrains. In
addition, with advance in battery charging techniques,
plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) technology has
received widespread attention since PHEVs can efficiently
store power, and then use this stored energy to meet the
required power demand, resulting in lower fuel
consumption. Therefore, the PEMFC/Li-ion battery PHEV
is a promising powertrain configuration based on currently
available technology.
The performance of PHEVs is greatly influenced by its
component sizes and the power management strategy. The
dynamic performance and vehicle cost of the PHEV are
determined by the sizes of its key components, i.e. the
PEMFC, Li-ion battery stack, electric motor. On the other
hand, for a specific PHEV with component sizes already

645
646 B. GENG, J. K. MILLS and D. SUN

selected the vehicle fuel consumption directly depends on its

power management strategy. Therefore, a combined power
management/design optimization problem (abbreviated as
“combined optimization problem” through the paper)
exists for PHEVs, which optimally design the component
sizes and power management strategy in an integrated
procedure.
Several works have been reported on combined
optimization problem in the literature, such as (Gao and
Mi, 2007; Ebbesen et al., 2012a; Long and Nhan, 2012;
Hegazy and Mierlo, 2012). However, these combined
optimization problems are formulated and investigated for
HEVs, and solved with techniques developed for single-
objective optimization problems (SOPs). For example, in
(Ebbesen et al., 2012a; Long and Nhan, 2012) the
combined optimization problems were modeled as multi-
objective optimization problems (MOPs), but the multiple
objectives were linearly aggregated to form a single
objective with user-defined weights before the MOP was
solved. However, appropriate selection of these weights,
which are closely related to the optimization performance,
depends on a priori knowledge of the search space. In
addition, the component sizing was determinized in (Lee et
al., 2013) for a plug-in hybrid electric bus utilizing a
simulation-based analysis procedure. Therefore, without
introducing any user-defined weights, a general multi-
objective optimization algorithm is needed to derive the
Pareto optimality for the PHEV combined optimization
problem.
In this paper, the combined optimization problem of a
fuel cell/battery PHEV is formulated as a constrained
MOP, which aims to simultaneously minimize the vehicle
cost and fuel consumption. A charge depleting and charge
sustaining (CDCS) strategy, commonly used for
commercial PHEVs, is developed to manage the power
flow between the PEMFC and the battery stack. Then, over
a given driving cycle, the Pareto-based multi-objective
particle swarm optimization (PMOPSO) algorithm is
proposed to optimize both component sizes and the power
management strategy and find the Pareto front for the
combined optimization problem.
Figure 1. Vehicle topology of the series PEMFC/Li-ion
battery PHEV (Geng et al., 2012).
bus yields
Pmot = Pbat + Pfc (1)
where Pmot, Pbat and Pfc are the power flow of the electric
motor, battery and PEMFC, respectively.
2.2. Dynamic Modeling of PHEV Powertrain
In this subsection, the hybrid powertrain shown in Figure 1
is mathematically modeled, associating several vehicle
component sizes (i.e. peak power of the PEMFC, energy
capacity of the battery stack and peak power of the motor)
to the powertrain dynamics and performance.
2.2.1. PEMFC
A 30 kW PEMFC model has been developed in our
previous work (Geng et al., 2012). The system efficiency
curve is normalized against its peak power and shown in
Figure 2. Then, the hydrogen consumption of the PEMFC,
when, Pfc ≠ 0 , is computed as
Pfc
m· H2 = ------------------------------------------------ (2)
LHV ⋅ ηfc ( Pfc ⁄ Pfc, max )
where Hf is the lower heating value of hydrogen
(120 MJkg-1), and m· H2 is the hydrogen mass flow rate. Pfc is
the PEMFC output power, and Pfc, max is the peak power of
the PEMFC. For theoretical analysis, the hydrogen
consumption rate of the PEMFC is assumed to be zero when
Pfc = 0. Due to physical limitations, the PEMFC output

2. PHEV POWERTRAIN TOPOLOGY AND

MODELING

2.1. PEMFC/Li-ion Battery PHEV Configuration

The PHEV considered in this paper has a series powertrain
structure as used in our previous work (Geng et al., 2012),
as shown in Figure 1. In the series topology, the PEMFC
and the Li-ion battery stack interface with the DC bus
through their individual DC/DC power converters. The
combined power from the PEMFC and the battery then
drives an AC motor via a DC/AC power converter, which
drives the vehicle wheels with a fixed-ratio differential. For
simplicity, the losses of these power conditioners are not
considered. Then, the power balance constraint of the DC Figure 2. Normalized PEMFC power vs. system efficiency.
 COMBINED POWER MANAGEMENT/DESIGN OPTIMIZATION FOR A FUEL CELL/BATTERY PLUG-IN 647

power is constrained by Table 1. Vehicle powertrain specifications.

Parameters Variable Value Unit
0 ≤ Pfc ≤ Pfc, max (3)
Rolling resistance fr 0.012 -
In addition, in order to protect the PEMFC longevity, the Drag coefficient CD 0.30 -
PEMFC power command change rate is constrained by
Frontal area Af 2.4 m2
∆Pmin ≤ Pfc, tk + ∆T – Pfc, tk ≤ ∆Pmax (4) Tire radius r 0.28 m

where ∆Pmin and ∆Pmax are maximum and minimum power

change rate, and tk represents the kth sampling point. ∆T is 2.2.4. Vehicle dynamics
the selected sampling step. The vehicle longitudinal movement is approximately
described via the Euler’s equation:
2.2.2. Li-ion battery stack
1
For simplicity and without loss of generality, the battery vk + 1 = vk + ----- [Ftrac + Fbrak – Fdrag – Frr – Fgr ] ⋅ ∆T (10)
M
stack is modeled using a piecewise linear ordinary
differential equation: where Ftrac is the traction force, Fbrak is the friction brake
force, Fdrag is aerodynamics drag force given by
Pbat,-k
SOCk + 1 = SOCk – ηbat ---------- ∆T (5)
Qbat 1
Fdrag = --- ρAf CD v2 (11)
2
⎧ 1 ⁄ ηchg, for Pbat ≤ 0
ηbat = ⎨ (6) Frr is the rolling resistance force given by
⎩ ηdis, for Pbat > 0
Frr = frMg cos θ (12)
where Qbat is the energy capacity, Pbat is the battery
charging/discharging power: Pbat ≤ 0 means the battery is Fgr is the grading resistance force given by
charging, Pbat > 0 means the battery is discharging. ηchg and
Fgr = Mg sin θ (13)
ηdis are the battery charging and discharging efficiency,
respectively. SOC is the battery state of charge, constrained
where fr , g, ρ, Af, CD and θ represent the rolling resistance,
by (Geng et al., 2013)
gravitational acceleration, air density, the vehicle frontal
area, aerodynamic drag coefficient and road slope,
SOCmin ≤ SOC ≤ SOCmax (7)
respectively. M is the total vehicle mass, v is the vehicle
velocity. The vehicle powertrain specifications are listed in
SOCmin and SOCmax are the minimum and maximum
Table 1.
battery SOC limitations, respectively. The battery output
power is constrained by
2.3. Vehicle Mass Model
The vehicle mass M changes with the component sizes, and
Pbat,min ≤ Pbat ≤ Pbat,max (8)
can be expressed as the total mass of the PEMFC, battery
stack, electric motor and the other vehicle components
where Pbat,min and Pbat,max are minimum and maximum
(vehicle body):
battery power limits, respectively. For simplicity, it is
assumed that Pbat,min = −Pbat,max.
M = Mbody + mfc Pfc, max + mbat Qbat + mmot Pmot, max (14)
2.2.3. Electric motor
where Mbody is the vehicle body mass, mfc is the power
PHEVs can operate in pure electric mode, during which the
density of the PEMFC, mbat is the battery energy desnsity,
battery stack drives the electric motor to meet the peaks in
mmot is the power density of the electric motor. The
power demand. To prevent reductions of vehicle
associated mass parameters are listed in Table 2.
drivability, the peak power of the electric path should
exceed the maximum vehicle demand:
2.4. Vehicle Cost Model
We are only interested in the vehicle cost incurred by the
Pmot,max, Pbat,max ηm ≥ Pdem,max (9)
PEMFC, battery and the motor:
where Pmot,max is the motor peak power. Pdem,max is the COST = Cfc + Cbat + Cmot (15)
maximum vehicle power demand over the selected driving
cycle. ηm is the motor efficiency. where Cfc and Cbat are Cmot the monetary cost of the
648 B. GENG, J. K. MILLS and D. SUN

Table 2. Vehicle component mass parameters.

Parameters Value Comment
Vehicle body mass (kg) 1200 Assumed
(Xu et al.,
PEMFC power density (kg/kW) 6.37
2013)
(Sorrentino et
Motor power density (kg/kW) 1
al., 2013)
(Xu et al.,
Battery energy density (kWh/kg) 0.1
2013)
(Xu et al.,
Battery power density (kW/kg) 0.3
2013)

Figure 3. Comparisons between blended strategies and

PEMFC, battery stack and electric motor, respectively. CDCS strategies.
Assuming that an annual production volume of 100,000
units can be achieved for fuel cells, the cost for the PEMFC
is estimated as $70.146/kW (Sorrentino et al., 2013). Then,
the PEMFC cost is expressed as (ii) During the charge sustaining mode, an equivalent
consumption minimization strategy (ECMS) based
Cfc = 70.146 × Pfc, max (16) approach is used to sustain the SOC:

The costs of the battery stack and electric motor are

calculated by (Wu et al., 2011) (19)

Cbat = $651.2 × Qbat + $680 (17)

where s is the equivalent factor, which is a trip-dependant
Cmot = $21.775 × Pmot,max + $425 (18) parameter. Considering the PEMFC power change rate
constraint (4), the power command input to the PEMFC is
3. CHARGE DEPLETING AND CHARGE calculated by
SUSTAINING STRATEGY
⎧ min ( PECMS
fc, k , Pfc, k – 1 + ∆Pmax ), if Pfc, k ≥ P fc, k – 1
ECMS
Pfc, k = ⎨ (20)
The core element of the PHEV development is its power ⎩ max( Pfc, k , Pfc, k – 1 + ∆Pmin ), if Pfc, k < Pfc, k – 1
ECMS ECMS

management control strategy, which can be categorized as

the blended strategy (Geng et al., 2011) and the CDCS
During the charge sustaining mode, the power
strategy (Xu et al., 2013). The blended strategy, during the
distribution between the PEMFC and the Li-ion battery is
entire trip, optimally use the combined power from the
determined by Equations (19) ~ (20). At each sampling
PEMFC and the battery to minimize the vehicle fuel
step, Equation (19) optimally calculates the power
consumption or some other performance criterions. In
reference for the PEMFC. Then, the power reference is
contrast, using the CDCS strategy, PHEVs are solely
further modified by Equation (20), deriving practical
powered by the battery stack in an identical manner to an
PEMFC power commands that are feasible subject to the
electric vehicle during the first stage (charge depleting
constraint (4).
mode); after the battery SOC drops to SOCmin, PHEVs
To make the ECMS practically implementable, s is
switch to the charge sustaining mode during which they use
adaptively tuned with the PI controller (Ebbesen et al.,
both the PEMFC and the battery to provide the vehicle
2012b):
power while sustaining the battery SOC like HEVs during
the rest of the trip. The difference between the blended
(21)
strategy and the CDCS strategy is illustrated in Figure 3.
Due to the ease of implementation, the CDCS strategy is
widely used in practical applications. Therefore, in this where eSOC,k = SOCk − SOCmin represents the battery SOC
paper, a CDCS strategy is developed to manage the power tracking error during the charge sustaining mode, SOCk is
flow of the powertrain. the battery SOC at each sampling step, Kp and Ki are the
The control logics for the developed CDCS strategy can proportional gain and the integral gain, respectively. i is an
be summarized as follows: index number with i = 0 indicating the start time of the
(i) During the charge depleting mode, Pfc = 0. charge sustaining mode.
 COMBINED POWER MANAGEMENT/DESIGN OPTIMIZATION FOR A FUEL CELL/BATTERY PLUG-IN
Table 3. Vehicle performance constraint.
Constraints Value
Acceleration time 0-60 mph≤12 s
Gradeability ≥55 mph@6.8%
Maximum speed ≥90 mph
All electric range ≥40 miles
4. COMBINED OPTIMIZATION PROBLEM
FORMATION
4.1. Vehicle Performance Constraints
PHEVs must satisfy several general requirements concerning
their dynamic performance, such as velocity constraint,
acceleration constraint, which are given in Table 3. The “all
electric range” (AER) denotes the maximum distance that
PHEVs travel over a specific driving profile only using the
battery power. In this paper, AER is measured at a constant
vehicle cruise speed of 60 mph (about 100 km/hr) on flat
roads.
4.2. Constrained MOP Formation
Qbat, Pfc,max and Pmot,max are component sizes that determine
the vehicle cost and the dynamic performance; Kp and Ki
are control parameters directly associated with the vehicle
fuel consumption. Rewrite these parameters in the vector
form, i.e. x = [Qbat, Pfc,max, Pmot,max, Kp, Ki]T; then x will be
optimized to minimize two objectives as follows:
(i) The fuel consumption
N
g1( x ) = ∑ m· H2, k ∆T
k=1
where N is the final sampling step of the trip.
(ii) The vehicle cost
g2(x) = COST
Then, the combined optimization problem is formulated
as follows:
xo = arg min[g1(x), g2(x)]
subject to
Ω:hi( x ) ≤ 0, i = 1, 2, …m
where Ω gives the feasible domain for the design vector,
which is prescribed by m vehicle performance constraints or
design parameter bounds. Interested readers may refer to
(Ebbesen et al., 2012a) which gives a detailed explaination on
how vehicle performance constraints in Table 3 are
transformed to Equation (25). In addition, all performance
constraints are uniformly expressed in the form of hi(x) ≤ 0
without loss of generality. A constraint in the form of hi'( x) ≥ 0
649
can be easily converted to –hi'( x) ≤ 0 by putting “−” on both
sides of the inequality.
5. PARETO BASED MULTI-OBJECTIVE
PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION
Inspired by mimicking social behavior of birds flocking or
fish schooling, the basic PSO was initially proposed by
Kennedy and Eberhart (Kennedy and Eberhart, 1995) to
find the optimal solution for unconstrained SOPs. PSO is a
stochastic population-based approach which uses a swarm
of randomly initialized particles to fly through the search
space. At each generation, particles update their velocities
and positions using knowledge from their past experience
and their neighbors according to (Kim et al., 2010):
(26)
where 1 ≤ n ≤ N is the particle index (N is the total number
of particles in the swarm), k is the generation index. xkn
represents the location of the nth particle. υkn is the velocity
vector of the nth particle constrained by υkmin ≤ υkn ≤ υkmax , and
υkmax is often set at 10−20% of the dynamic range of the
variable on each dimension. Pkn is the personal best for the
nth particle, Gkn is the global best for the nth particle. r1 and
r2 are random numbers uniformly distributed in [0,1]. c1 is
the cognitive scaling factor, and c2 is the social scaling
factor. χ is the contraction factor introduced to ensure the
convenience, and computed by:
(22) (27)
where ϕ = c1 + c2 > 4.
The methodology to address constraints developed in
(23) (Kim et al., 2010) is used to transform the constrained
MOP (24) ~ (25) to an unconstrained MOP by
incorporating system constraints in the objective functions:
(24) (28)
where, hmax(x) = max[h1(x), h2(x), …, hm(x)], and atan[·] is
(25) the inverse tangent function. hmax(x) is the maximum value
among hi(x). A feasible solution should guarantee that
hi(x) ≤ 0, and hmax(x) ≤ 0 accordingly. However, during the
particle flight, certain particles might fly out of the feasible
domain, which results in hi(x) ≥ 0. In that case, hmax(x), by
its definition, becomes positive. Then, by minimizing the
value of hmax(x) according to Equation (28), hmax(x) will be
reduced until hmax(x) ≤ 0; in other words, these particles will
fly back towards the feasible domain. In this way, system
constraints (25) are considered implicitly by proposing the
650 B. GENG, J. K. MILLS and D. SUN

new objective function (28).

Then, the PMOPSO approach (Alvarez-Benitez et al.,
2005), which does not require definition of distance
metrics, is extended from the basic PSO to solve the
unconstrained MOP (28). This algorithm uses an external
archive A to store non-dominated solutions during the
particle flight. The algorithm of PMOPSO is briefly
summarized as below:
Step1: Initialize the external archive A1, the particle
locations x1n , the particle velocities υ1n , the maximum
generation kmax and the archive size Amax.
During each generation,
Step2: Calculate the locations and velocities of N
particles xkn , υkn using (26).
Step3: To avoid being trapped in local minima, a
mutation operator γkn, i ( pkn) is applied to each particle xkn with
a mutation possibility pkn to produce the mutated particle
xkmu , i.e. xkmu, n = xkn + γkn( pkn ) . If xkmu, n xkn , then xkmu, n will
replace xkn in the swarm; otherwise, the swarm remains
unchanged. The symbol means x (does not)
weakly dominates y; the symbol means x
(does not) strictly dominates y. The mutation operator
γkn( pkn ) is defined as

(29)

where i is the element index in the vector, xL and xH are the

lower and higher parameter bounds given in Table 4, Figure 4. Flowchart of the crowding distance computation.
respectively. λ ~ N(0, σ2) is a stochastic variable subject to CD represents the crowding distance.
the normal distribution, and σ is the standard deviation.
pkn decays with the generation index: rapidly decrease.
Step4: Update the external archive, the personal best and
τk ⁄ kmax
pkn = αe +β (30) the global best with the following rules:
(a) Archive update rule: ∀a ∈ Ak – 1 , if a xki , then xki
where α = 0.2, β = 0.1 and τ = −10. enters into the archive, and elements satisfying a xki
will be removed from the archive; otherwise, Ak = Ak−1.
Using this decaying mutation possibility, the feasible (b) Personal best update rule: if xkn Pkn – 1 or ( xkn Pkn – 1) ^
domain can be fully explored via mutations of a substantial ( Pkn – 1 xkn ) , then Pkn = xkn , or else Pkn = Pkn – 1 .
percent of particles at the start of the optimization (Coello (c) Global best update rule: Gkn is selected from Ak based
et al., 2004). With subsequent generations, the number of on the concept of crowding distance (Raquel et al.,
particles affected by the mutation turbulence would then 2005). The crowding distance of a solution in the
archive approximately reflects its average distance
Table 4. Bounds of design parameters. among its neighboring solutions, and its computation
algorithm is showned in Figure 4. The sort function
Lower Upper sorts solutions of the jth objective in descending order,
Parameters Description
bound bound and the position function returns the position index of
Qbat Battery capacity (kWh) 0 40 gj[i] in ĝj .
Pfc,max PEMFC peak power (kW) 0 200 During each generation, all solutions in the archive are
sorted in a descending order according to their crowding
Pmot,max Motor peak power (kW) 50 200 distance. To encourage particles to explore the sparse area
Kp Proportional gain −1000 0 of the objective space, Gkn is randomly selected from the
top 5% solutions with the highest crowding distance.
Ki Integral gain −1000 0
Moreover, the crowding distance of boundary solutions is
 COMBINED POWER MANAGEMENT/DESIGN OPTIMIZATION FOR A FUEL CELL/BATTERY PLUG-IN 651

Table 5. Parameters for the PMOPSO.

Parameters Description Value
N number of particles 50
c1 cognitive scaling factor 2.05
c2 social scaling factor 2.05
χ contraction factor 0.729
σ standard deviation 0.316
kmax maximum generation 1000
Amax archive size 300

set to infinity so that these points may always be selected as Figure 6. Coordinates of the solutions in the external
a global guide, allowing particles to explore wider space. archive.
Step5: Repeat Step 2−4 until kmax or Amax is reached.
Several important parameters for the implementation of
the PMOPSO are listed in Table 5. constrained within their permitted bounds.
Four typical points are selected and compared. a, b and c
6. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS are in the Pareto optimal set P, while d is a benchmark
solution the objective of which locates in right region of
To verify the control performance, ten consecutive PF, as shown in Figure 5. The parameters of these four
repetitions of Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule solutions are listed in Table 6, and their resultant vehicle
(10UDDS) is selected for illustrative purpose. The cost, fuel consumption and dynamic performance criterions
combined optimization problem for the PEMFC PHEV are compared in Table 7. All solutions satisfy the vehicle
over other typical driving cycles can be similarly solved. performance requirements in Table 3. a and b are boundary
Over 10UDDS, the Pareto front (PF) produced by the solutions in P: a results in the smallest vehicle cost and
PMOPSO for the PHEV combined optimization problem is further cost reduction will violate at least one of the
plotted in Figure 5. We can see that by utilizing the concept prescribed vehicle constraints; c leads to the least vehicle
of crowding distance, the non-dominated solutions are
evenly distributed in PF, which implies good solution
Table 6. Parameters of the four selected solutions.
diversity. The Pareto front produced by the PMOPSO
without the mutation operator is also plotted in Figure 5 for Variables Unit a b c d
comparison, which shows that without the mutation Qbat kWh 19.7 22.6 26.8 23.4
operator, the particles are easily trapped in local minima
and cannot converge to the true Pareto front. In addition, Pfc,max kW 62.8 51.2 33.9 47.8
Figure 6 describes coordinates of Pareto optimal solutions Pmot,max kW 115.2 111.8 107.5 111.2
in the archive, showing that all Pareto optimal solutions are
Kp - -427.3 -320.0 -188.2 -507.9
Ki - -1.90 -1.4 -20.7 -432.5

Table 7. Vehicle cost, fuel consumption and dynamic

performance.
Variables Unit a b c d
Cost $ 20.9k 21.8k 23.3k 22.1k
Fuel
kg 0.314 0.189 0 0.225
consumption
Acceleration
s 12.0 12.0 12.0 12.0
time
Gradeability mph@6.8% 99.5 102.6 101.7 102.5
Maximum
mph 134.5 133.4 131.7 133.1
speed
Figure 5. Pareto front produced by the PMOPSO for the
combined optimization problem over 10UDDS. AER mile 40.0 46.2 55.8 48.1
652 B. GENG, J. K. MILLS and D. SUN

fuel consumption, in which the PHEV works in the electric

mode over the entire trip. b is a tradeoff solution
compromising between the vehicle cost and fuel consumption,
and d causes both larger vehicle cost and fuel consumption
than c.
The resultant SOC trajectory, the PEMFC power, the
PEMFC power change rate and the battery output power for
solution a−c are plotted in Figure 7 ~ Figure 9, respectively.
It is observed that using the Pareto optimal solutions
derived by the PMOPSO, (i) the power commands of the
PEMFC are within the designed power limitations; (ii)
during the entire trip, all SOC trajectories vary in the
CDCS mode; (iii) the battery SOC bounds are respected
during the trip. These results lead to the conclusion that
derived Pareto optimal solutions satisfy the vehicle Figure 7. SOC trajectory, the PEMFC power, the PEMFC
operational constraints. power change rate and the battery output power using
According to Equation (21), during the charge sustaining solution a.
mode, when the battery SOC falls below SOCmin, s
adaptively becomes larger, which causes the battery to
charge. In contrast, when the battery SOC is larger than
SOCmin, s adaptively reduces so as to discharge the battery.
In this way, the battery SOC can be sustained at a constant
value during the charge sustaining mode, as shown in
Figure 7 and 8. The battery SOC profiles during the charge
sustaining mode in Figure 7 and 8 are highlighted in Figure
10 to illustrate the detailed behaviors of the charge
sustaining mode.
A aggregating approach is also introduced to compare
with the PMOPSO which optimizes a weighted sum of
vehicle cost and fuel consumption as follows:

g = ω ⋅ g1 ⁄ g1, max + ( 1 – ω ) ⋅ g2 ⁄ g2, max (31)

where ω is the weight parameter with 0 ≤ ω ≤ 1. g1,max and
g2,max are the estimated maximum vehicle cost and fuel
consumption, respectively. The optimal PF can be derived
by minimizing (31) with respect to different ω.
In this study, an improved PSO incorporating the
mutation operation (29) and constraint handling technique
(28) is adopted to minimize (31). The algorithm of the
improved PSO is briefly summarized as follows. The
related control parameters are the same with those for the
PMOPSO except that kmax = 200. kmax is selected via
repeated trials such that optimal solutions are derived with
small computation cost.
Step1: Initialize the particle locations x1n , the particle
velocities υ1n , the maximum generation kmax.
During each generation,
Step2: Calculate the locations and velocities of N
particles xkn , υkn using (26).
Step3: Apply the mutation operator (29) to each particle
xkn , and replace xkn with xkmu, n if g( xkmu, n ) < g( xkn) .
Step4: Determine the personal best: if g( xkn) < g( Pkn – 1) ,
then Pkn = xkn , or else Pkn = Pkn – 1 ; and the global best: for all
particles, Gk is selected as Pkn that results in the minimum
objective.
Figure 8. SOC trajectory, the PEMFC power, the PEMFC
power change rate and the battery output power using
solution b.
Step5: Repeat Step 2−4 until kmax is reached.
From extensive simulation experiments, we find that for
ω ≤ 0.9 the optimization solutions converge to point c in
Figure 5. This can be explained by the phenomenon that
the PF experiences a much larger percentage increase in
the fuel consumption (100%) than that in the vehicle cost
(10.3%), as shown in Figure 5. This implies that for the
PHEV combined optimization problem the performance of
the aggregating approach is very sensitive to the proper
selection of these weights.
With the weights selected from 0.9 to 1.0 with an
interval of 0.01, the PF derived by the aggregating
approach is compared with that by the PMOPSO in Figure
11. It takes 2200 generations for the aggregating approach
to find 11 candidate solutions (10 solutions are in the PF),
while the PMOPSO just uses 530 generations to derive 300
Pareto optimal solutions. In addition, using the aggregating
approach several solutions cluster in the true PF, see Figure
11, indicating the challenge of deriving a well-shaped PF
 COMBINED POWER MANAGEMENT/DESIGN OPTIMIZATION FOR A FUEL CELL/BATTERY PLUG-IN
Figure 9. SOC trajectory, the PEMFC power, the PEMFC
power change rate and the battery output power using
solution c.
Figure 10. Detailed battery SOC profiles during the charge
sustaining mode.
Figure 11. Pareto front derived by the aggregating approach
compared with that by the PMOPSO.
by selecting proper weights. Moreover, using the PMOPSO
the PF is fully and evenly covered with Pareto optimal
solutions, in contrast to a poorly covered PF by the
653
aggregating approach. Therefore, the PMOPSO is much
less computationally demanding and more effective in
deriving the true PF.
7. CONCLUSION
This paper studies the combined power management/
design optimization problem for a PEMFC/Li-ion battery
PHEV, which uses a CDCS strategy to distribute the
vehicle power demand between the PEMFC and battery
stack. The main contribution of the paper lies in the
development of the PMOPSO algorithm to solve the
combined optimization problem, which is formulated as a
constrained MOP to minimize the vehicle cost and fuel
consumption. The PMOPSO approach yields the true
Pareto optimal solutions for the combined optimization
problem without introducing user-defined weights. As an
initial step, the constrained MOP is transformed to an
unconstrained MOP by incooperating the system
constraints into the objectives. To generate a sparsely
distributed Pareto front, the concept of crowding distance is
used to select the global best guidance for particles.
Moreover, to avoid being trapped in local minima, a
turbulence operator is defined to mutate particles.
Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the
PMOPSO in computations of the Pareto front over a
typical driving cycle. The PMOPSO approach developed in
this work demonstrates the following three advantages : (i)
the resulting Pareto optimal solutions are within their
prescribed bounds; (ii) the vehicle performance requirements
and operational constraints are simultaneously satisfied; and
(iii) the efficacy of the PMOPSO approach is greatly
improved compared with an existing benchmark
optimization algorithm.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT−The work was supported by grants
from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region, China (Reference No. CityU 121513 and
CityU9/CRF/13G).
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