Definition and verification of fuel efficiency strategies for a plugin hybrid electric vehicle using hardware in the loop simulation

Thesis (M.S.) California State University, Los Angeles, 2012Committee members: Kamran Karimlou, David Blekhman, Don Maurizio, Fred DaneshgaranIncreases in oil price caused variety of emission regulations to be applied by many governments in the last decade. Since then, continuous efforts been made to improve the reliability, performance and fuel efficiency of hybrid vehicles.Hardware in the Loop (HIL) simulation is a powerful tool for control validation; since it can be applied to any vehicle designs independent from vehicle availability. Hardware and software tested using this method would be scalable and adaptive to relevant problems throughout the design process. Controller validation and failure simulation have become increasingly popular uses of HIL simulation.The main scope of this project is presentation of testing procedure of control strategies on a 2013 Chevy Malibu, which was done using hardware in the loop simulation. This research was done as a part of EcoCar2 competition at California State University Los Angeles. EcoCAR2 is a student competition among sixteen North American universities.Electrical and Computer Engineerin