Although hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) generally improve fuel economy (FE) compared to conventional vehicles, evidence of higher FE variability in HEVs compared to conventional vehicles indicates that apart from the improvement in FE, the reduction of FE variability is also of significant importance for HEVs. Over the years research on how to optimise powertrain component sizes of HEVs has generally focused on improving FE over a given driving pattern; FE variability over a realistic range of driving patterns has generally been overlooked, and this can lead to FE benefits of HEVs not being fully realised in real-world usage. How to reduce the FE variability in HEVs due to variation in driving patterns through the optimisation of powertrain component sizes is considered as the research question. This research proposes a new methodology in which powertrain components are optimised over a range of driving patterns representing different traffic conditions and driving styles simultaneously. This improves upon the traditional methodology followed in the reviewed literature, where an optimisation is performed for each individual driving pattern. An analysis shows that the traditional methodology could produce around 20% FE variability due to variation in driving patterns. This study considers a computer simulation model of a series-parallel Toyota Prius HEV for the investigation. Four powertrain components, namely, internal combustion engine, generator, motor, and battery of the Toyota Prius are optimised for FE using a genetic algorithm. For both the proposed and traditional methodologies, the powertrain components are optimised based on 5 standard driving patterns representing different traffic conditions and driving styles. During the optimisation, the proposed methodology considers all the 5 driving patterns simultaneously, whereas the traditional methodology considers each driving pattern separately. The optimum designs of both the methodologies and the simulation model of the Toyota Prius which is the benchmark vehicle for this study are evaluated for FE over the aforementioned 5 standard driving patterns and also 10 real-world driving patterns of a predefined route consisting of urban and highway driving patterns. The proposed methodology provides a single optimum design over the 5 standard driving patterns, whereas the traditional methodology provides 5 different optimum designs, one for each driving pattern. The single optimum design produced by the proposed methodology is independent of the sequence of driving patterns. The proposed methodology reduces FE variability by 5.3% and up to 48.9% with comparable average FE compared to the Toyota Prius and traditional methodology, respectively over the 10 real-world driving patterns, whereas none of the optimum designs of the traditional methodology is able to reduce FE variability compared to the Toyota Prius. This research provides a promising direction to address customer concerns related to FE in the real-world and improves understanding of the effect of driving patterns on the design of powertrain components.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:618957 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Roy, Hillol K. |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/62732/ |
Page generated in 0.0013 seconds