Hybrid electric vehicles : from optimization toward real-time control strategies

International audienceHybrid-electric vehicles appear to be one of the most promising technologies for reducing fuel consumption and pollutant emissions. The presented work focuses on two types of architecture : a mild hybrid and a full hybrid where the kinetic energy in the breaking phases is stored in a battery to be re-used later via the electric motor. This additional traction power allows to downsize the engine and still fulfill the power requirements. Moreover, the engine can be turned off in idle phases for both architectures and for the parallel architecture, it may be turned off whereas the electric motor furnishes all the traction power. The optimal control problem of the energy management between the two power sources is solved for given driving cycles by a classical dynamic programming method and by an alternative method based on Pontryagin Minimum Principle. The real time control laws to be implemented on the vehicle are derived from the resulting optimal control strategies. These control laws are evaluated on another driving cycle which was not given a priori