Adaptive Model-Predictive-Control-Based Real-Time Energy Management of Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicles

To compete with battery electric vehicles, fuel cell (FC) hybrid electric vehicles (FCHEVs) are required to offer better performance in fuel economy and FC durability. To this end, this article proposes a novel real-time adaptive model predictive control (AMPC)-based energy management strategy (EMS) for FCHEVs to improve their fuel efficiency and mitigate the degradation of their onboard FC hybrid systems. First, a linear parameter-varying (LPV) prediction model of the FC hybrid system that considers the system parameter variation is developed. The model offers sufficient accuracy while enabling the real-time implementation capability of the AMPC. Then, an AMPC strategy is proposed to optimally distribute the load current of the FCHEV between the FC and the battery in real time. In each control interval of the AMPC, the LPV prediction model is updated online to adapt to the variations of the battery state of charge. The constrained optimization problem of the AMPC is then formulated to achieve a desired tradeoff among four performance metrics and is further transformed into a quadratic programming problem, which can be solved in real time. Hardware-in-the-loop tests are performed on a downscaled FC hybrid system with the proposed AMPC-based EMS, a commonly used rule-based EMS, an equivalent consumption minimization strategy, and an improved MPC-based EMS, respectively. Results show that among the four real-time EMSs, the AMPC-based EMS achieves the best performance in reducing hydrogen consumption and FC current fluctuation and the smallest optimality gap with respect to an offline dynamic programming-based optimal EMS.

Automated summary

To improve the fuel efficiency and durability of fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles (FCHEVs) and compete with battery electric vehicles, this article proposes a real-time adaptive model predictive control (AMPC)-based energy management strategy (EMS). The strategy optimally distributes the load current between the fuel cell (FC) and the battery in real time, considering the parameter variations of the FC hybrid system. Hardware-in-the-loop tests show that the proposed AMPC-based EMS achieves the best performance in reducing hydrogen consumption and FC current fluctuation compared to other real-time EMSs.