Energy management toolkit jump starts hybrids

Vehicle engineers developing novel alternative fuelled vehicles can get a 'jump start' in developing the complex control systems required with the launch of a new energy management toolkit.

Vehicle engineers developing novel alternative fuelled vehicles can get a 'jump start' in developing the complex control systems required with the launch of a new energy management toolkit from Pi Technology.

Vehicle manufacturers, system suppliers and research institutions are investigating the cost-benefit issues associated with the use of various new and derivative configurations of electric, and hybrid-electric, and other types of hybrid powertrains.

Irrespective of the exact configuration of the powertrain, one of the key technical challenges is the integration of the various hybrid powertrain components such that energy consumption can be optimised without compromising the driveability and refinement of the vehicle.

This toolkit is set to help program engineers to face these technical challenges while still reducing time to market.

Fundamentally, all electric or hybrid electric powertrains are made up of three basic components or sub-systems; those that source (deliver) energy into the powertrain, those that sink (take) energy out from the powertrain and those that can act as both an energy source or an energy sink.

Pi Technology has shown that any powertrain system irrespective of its exact components or architecture can be controlled by the application of a set of generic energy management laws that optimises the flow and conversion of energy within the powertrain.

Pi's toolkit uses this principle to provide basic, 'get you started' functionality to tackle the vehicle level system control functions, such as: battery management; integration of multiple energy sources irrespective of their locations within the powertrain; thermal management of the powertrain; and component and system level fault management and compensation strategies.

The strategies will be sufficiently sophisticated to allow optimisation by calibration for a multitude of different powertrain components and architectures.

At ETI 2002 Pi Technology provided their first public demonstration of the energy management toolkit.

Visitors were able to see that a single set of control strategies can be employed to control four different advanced powertrain configurations: battery electric powertrain; parallel hybrid electric - ICE powertrain; fuel cell battery hybrid - electric powertrain; and fuel cell electric powertrain.

Evaluation of the different powertrain concepts and control functions is done over both legislative and "real-world" drive-cycles.

Adrian Carnie, Manager, Alternative Fuels Business Unit, Pi Technology said: "By creating this toolkit, we're making available our man-decades of experience in a practical way that helps engineers find the short cuts in validating and developing novel powertrains".

The control strategies are provided as a set of Simulink models, allowing conceptual analysis and initial calibration of the control algorithm design to be done in isolation from the physical system.

The Simulink models are automatically converted to code operating on production hardware through Pi Technology's recently launched OpenECU platform.

OpenECU provides a real-time rapid control prototyping environment based on production hardware, in which the user can assess the robustness of a design.

The transparency of Simulink models allows the designer to further develop control algorithm functionality alongside representative physical components and other vehicle systems.

One of Pi's current projects is support of the Ford Focus FCV (fuel cell vehicle) programme.

In particular Pi is developing application software for the thermal systems controller, vehicle systems controller and energy management module, along with a common software platform that the applications on all three controllers use to interface to the hardware.

One new area that Pi Technology is evaluating is the integration of vehicle telematics and onboard energy management systems to further enhance the control of the powertrain by making the vehicle aware of its location and physical environment.

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