Optimal Control of Hybrid Vehicles provides a description of power train control for hybrid vehicles. The background, environmental motivation and control challenges associated with hybrid vehicles are introduced. The text includes mathematical models for all relevant components in the hybrid power train. The power split problem in hybrid power trains is formally described and several numerical solutions detailed, including dynamic programming and a novel solution for state-constrained optimal control problems based on the maximum principle. Real-time-implementable strategies that can approximate the optimal solution closely are dealt with in depth. Several approaches are discussed and compared, including a state-of-the-art strategy which is adaptive for vehicle conditions like velocity and mass. Three case studies are included in the book: • a control strategy for a micro-hybrid power train; • experimental results obtained with a real-time strategy implemented in a hybrid electric truck; and • an analysis of the optimal component sizes for a hybrid power train. Optimal Control of Hybrid Vehicles will appeal to academic researchers and graduate students interested in hybrid vehicle control or in the applications of optimal control. Practitioners working in the design of control systems for the automotive industry will also find the ideas propounded in this book of interest.

This book assembles new methods showing the automotive engineer for the first time how hybrid vehicle configurations can be modeled as systems with discrete and continuous controls. These hybrid systems describe naturally and compactly the networks of embedded systems which use elements such as integrators, hysteresis, state-machines and logical rules to describe the evolution of continuous and discrete dynamics and arise inevitably when modeling hybrid electric vehicles. They can throw light on systems which may otherwise be too complex or recondite. Hybrid Systems, Optimal Control and Hybrid Vehicles shows the reader how to formulate and solve control problems which satisfy multiple objectives which may be arbitrary and complex with contradictory influences on fuel consumption, emissions and drivability. The text introduces industrial engineers, postgraduates and researchers to the theory of hybrid optimal control problems. A series of novel algorithmic developments provides tools for solving engineering problems of growing complexity in the field of hybrid vehicles. Important topics of real relevance rarely found in text books and research publications—switching costs, sensitivity of discrete decisions and there impact on fuel savings, etc.—are discussed and supported with practical applications. These demonstrate the contribution of optimal hybrid control in predictive energy management, advanced powertrain calibration, and the optimization of vehicle configuration with respect to fuel economy, lowest emissions and smoothest drivability. Numerical issues such as computing resources, simplifications and stability are treated to enable readers to assess such complex systems. To help industrial engineers and managers with project decision-making, solutions for many important problems in hybrid vehicle control are provided in terms of requirements, benefits and risks.

Vehicle Power Management addresses the challenge of improving vehicle fuel economy and reducing emissions without sacrificing vehicle performance, reliability and durability. It opens with the definition, objectives, and current research issues of vehicle power management, before moving on to a detailed introduction to the modeling of vehicle devices and components involved in the vehicle power management system, which has been proven to be the most cost-effective and efficient method for initial-phase vehicle research and design. Specific vehicle power management algorithms and strategies, including the analytical approach, optimal control, intelligent system approaches and wavelet technology, are derived and analyzed for realistic applications. Vehicle Power Management also gives a detailed description of several key technologies in the design phases of hybrid electric vehicles containing battery management systems, component optimization, hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop. Vehicle Power Management provides graduate and upper level undergraduate students, engineers, and researchers in both academia and the automotive industry, with a clear understanding of the concepts, methodologies, and prospects of vehicle power management.

This SpringerBrief deals with the control and optimization problem in hybrid electric vehicles. Given that there are two (or more) energy sources (i.e., battery and fuel) in hybrid vehicles, it shows the reader how to implement an energy-management strategy that decides how much of the vehicle’s power is provided by each source instant by instant. Hybrid Electric Vehicles: •introduces methods for modeling energy flow in hybrid electric vehicles; •presents a standard mathematical formulation of the optimal control problem; •discusses different optimization and control strategies for energy management, integrating the most recent research results; and •carries out an overall comparison of the different control strategies presented. Chapter by chapter, a case study is thoroughly developed, providing illustrative numerical examples that show the basic principles applied to real-world situations. The brief is intended as a straightforward tool for learning quickly about state-of-the-art energy-management strategies. It is particularly well-suited to the needs of graduate students and engineers already familiar with the basics of hybrid vehicles but who wish to learn more about their control strategies.

One of the main goals of hybrid electric vehicle technology is to improve the energy efficiency. In industry and most of academic research, the powertrain control is designed and evaluated under standard driving cycles. However, the situations that a vehicle may encounter in the real world could be quite different from the standard cycles. Studies show that the human drivers have a great influence on the vehicle energy consumptions and emissions. The actual operating conditions that a vehicle faces are not only dependent on the roads and traffic, but also dependent on the drivers. A standard driving cycle can only represent the typical and averaged driving style under the typical driving scenarios, therefore the control strategies designed based on a standard driving cycle may not perform well for all different driving styles. This motivates the idea to design optimally-personalized hybrid electric vehicle control methods that can be adaptive to individual human driving styles and their driving routes. Human-subject experiments are conducted on a driving simulator to study the driving behaviors. A stochastic driver pedal model that can learn individual driver’s driving style is developed first. Then a theoretic investigation on worst-case relative cost optimal control problems, which is closely related to vehicle powertrain optimal control under real-world uncertain driving scenarios, is presented. A two-level control structure for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is proposed, where the parameters in the lower-level controller can be on-line adjusted via optimization using historical driving data. The methods to optimize these parameters are designed for fixed-route driving first, and then extended to multi-routes driving using the idea similar to the worst-case relative cost optimal control. The performances of the two proposed methods are shown through simulations using human driving data and stochastic driver model data respectively. The energy consumption results in both situations are close to the posteriori optimal result and outperform other existing methods, which show the effectiveness of applying optimally-personalized energy management strategy on hybrid electric vehicles. Finally, a route-based global energy-optimal speed planning method is also proposed. This off-line method provides a useful tool to evaluate the potential of other speed planning methods, for either eco-driving guidance applications or future automated vehicle controls. The contributions of this dissertation include 1) a novel stochastic driver pedal behavior model which can learn independent drivers’ driving styles is created, 2) a new worst-case relative cost optimal control method is proposed, 3) a real-time implementable stochastic optimal energy management strategy for hybrid electric vehicles running on fixed routes is designed using the statistics of history driving data, 4) the fix-route strategy is extended to the multi-route situation, and 5) an off-line global energy-optimal speed planning solution for road vehicles on a given route is presented.