Predictive energy management strategies for hybrid electric vehicles applied during acceleration events

2019 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.The emergence and widespread adoption of vehicles with hybrid powertrains and onboard computing capabilities have improved the feasibility of utilizing predictions of vehicle state to enable optimal energy management strategies (EMS) to improve fuel economy. Real-world implementation of optimal EMS remains challenging in part because of limits on prediction accuracy and computation speed. However, if a finite set of EMS can be pre-derived offline, instead of onboard the vehicle in real time, fuel economy improvements may be possible using hardware that is common in current production vehicles. Acceleration events (AE) are attractive targets for this kind of EMS application due to their high energy cost, probability of recurrence, and limited variability. This research aims to understand how a finite set of EMS might be derived and applied to AEs based on predictions of basic AE attributes to achieve reliable fuel economy improvements. Models of the 2010 Toyota Prius are used to simulate fuel economy for a variety of control strategies, including baseline control, optimal EMS control derived via dynamic programming, and pre-derived control applied with approximate prediction to AEs. Statistical methods are used to identify correlations between AE attributes, optimal powertrain control, and fuel economy results. Then, key AE attributes are used to define AE categorization schemes of various resolutions, in which one pre-derived EMS is applied to every AE in a category. Last, the control strategies are simulated during a variety of drive cycles to predict real-world fuel economy results. By simulating fuel economy improvement for AEs both in isolation and in the context of drive cycles, it was concluded that applying pre-derived EMS to AEs based on predictions of initial and final velocity is likely to enable reliable fuel economy benefits in low-aggression driving