A Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Vehicle Modeling and Power Management/Regenerative Braking Controller Design

Abstract

Here, a hybrid vehicle structure comprising fuel cell/battery and a PMDC electrical machine has been proposed, in which an intelligent controller is to perform power management and regenerative braking tasks. Instead of a gasoline engine, an electric machine fulfills the power demand from the vehicle during driving and braking modes. In addition, regenerative braking is possible in the proposed structure. The fuel cell is connected to a battery (DC bus) via a DC/DC converter which can control the fuel cell power/current with a switching strategy. A Nero–Fuzzy controller has been devised in order for taking the power demand as one of its controlling signals and making decision with respect to the power management issue. Duty cycle of the DC/DC converter is computed by the driving controller and applied with a certain switching frequency. Along with the power demand, braking pedal displacement, and the battery state of charge act as controlling signals, which allow the power management controller to perform pertinent analysis for power sharing decision between both the power sources. A threshold zone has been considered for braking pedal, according to which a regenerative torque is produced by the electrical machine. Finally, the simulation results have been considered from different point of views and evaluated, which shows a tenable achievement. Particularly, a series of driving maneuvers were applied to the vehicle, and the results show that the proposed structure has a promising performance as a civic automobile with zero emissions.