Assessment, design and control strategy development of a fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle for CSU's ecocar

2013 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Advanced automotive technology assessment and powertrain design are increasingly performed through modeling, simulation, and optimization. But technology assessments usually target many competing criteria making any individual optimization challenging and arbitrary. Further, independent design simulations and optimizations take considerable time to execute, and design constraints and objectives change throughout the design process. Changes in design considerations usually require re-processing of simulations and more time. In this thesis, these challenges are confronted through CSUs participation in the EcoCAR2 hybrid vehicle design competition. The complexity of the competition's design objectives leveraged development of a decision support system tool to aid in multi-criteria decision making across technologies and to perform powertrain optimization. To make the decision support system interactive, and bypass the problem of long simulation times, a new approach was taken. The result of this research is CSU's architecture selection and component sizing, which optimizes a composite objective function representing the competition score. The selected architecture is an electric vehicle with an onboard range extending hydrogen fuel cell system. The vehicle has a 145kW traction motor, 18.9kWh of lithium ion battery, a 15kW fuel cell system, and 5kg of hydrogen storage capacity. Finally, a control strategy was developed that improves the vehicles performance throughout the driving range under variable driving conditions. In conclusion, the design process used in this research is reviewed and evaluated against other common design methodologies. I conclude, through the highlighted case studies, that the approach is more comprehensive than other popular design methodologies and is likely to lead to a higher quality product. The upfront modeling work and decision support system formulation will pay off in superior and timely knowledge transfer and more informed design decisions. The hypothesis is supported by the three case studies examined in this thesis

1992 NASA Life Support Systems Analysis workshop

The 1992 Life Support Systems Analysis Workshop was sponsored by NASA's Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology (OAST) to integrate the inputs from, disseminate information to, and foster communication among NASA, industry, and academic specialists. The workshop continued discussion and definition of key issues identified in the 1991 workshop, including: (1) modeling and experimental validation; (2) definition of systems analysis evaluation criteria; (3) integration of modeling at multiple levels; and (4) assessment of process control modeling approaches. Through both the 1991 and 1992 workshops, NASA has continued to seek input from industry and university chemical process modeling and analysis experts, and to introduce and apply new systems analysis approaches to life support systems. The workshop included technical presentations, discussions, and interactive planning, with sufficient time allocated for discussion of both technology status and technology development recommendations. Key personnel currently involved with life support technology developments from NASA, industry, and academia provided input to the status and priorities of current and future systems analysis methods and requirements

Thermal Characteristics and Safety Aspects of Lithium-Ion Batteries: An In-Depth Review

This paper provides an overview of the significance of precise thermal analysis in the context of lithium-ion battery systems. It underscores the requirement for additional research to create efficient methodologies for modeling and controlling thermal properties, with the ultimate goal of enhancing both the safety and performance of Li-ion batteries. The interaction between temperature regulation and lithium-ion batteries is pivotal due to the intrinsic heat generation within these energy storage systems. A profound understanding of the thermal behaviors exhibited by lithium-ion batteries, along with the implementation of advanced temperature control strategies for battery packs, remains a critical pursuit. Utilizing tailored models to dissect the thermal dynamics of lithium-ion batteries significantly enhances our comprehension of their thermal management across a wide range of operational scenarios. This comprehensive review systematically explores diverse research endeavors that employ simulations and models to unravel intricate thermal characteristics, behavioral nuances, and potential runaway incidents associated with lithium-ion batteries. The primary objective of this review is to underscore the effectiveness of employed characterization methodologies and emphasize the pivotal roles that key parameters—specifically, current rate and temperature—play in shaping thermal dynamics. Notably, the enhancement of thermal design systems is often more feasible than direct alterations to the lithium-ion battery designs themselves. As a result, this thermal review primarily focuses on the realm of thermal systems. The synthesized insights offer a panoramic overview of research findings, with a deeper understanding requiring consultation of specific published studies and their corresponding modeling endeavors

Optimized Nail for Penetration Test on Lithium-Ion Cells and Its Utilization for the Validation of a Multilayer Electro-Thermal Model

Nail penetration is one of the most critical scenarios for a lithium-ion cell: it involves the superposition of electrical, thermal and mechanical abusive loads. When an electrically conductive nail is introduced into the active layers of a lithium-ion cell, an electric short circuit takes place between the conductive components (electrodes and current collectors). Hence, for this load case, electro-thermal modeling must be performed considering each and every layer of the cell in order to predict the electric quantities and the cell temperature (with numerical models). When standard conic nails are used, as is typical for this class of tests, the electrical contact between conductive components and the nail itself suffers of poor reproducibility mainly due to the separator that interposes between the electrically conductive components. This phenomenon makes it difficult to validate electro-thermal models, since the electrical contact between nail and lithium-ion cell parts cannot be safely determined. In this work, an alternative nail with an optimized ratio between the external surface and volume is presented to overcome this issue. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed nail, five tests (with the same conditions) were conducted on five commercial lithium-ion pouch cells, monitoring the tabs voltage and surface temperature. In all tests, thermal runaway was reached within 30 s and the tabs voltage showed comparable behavior, indicating that the short circuit values for all five repetitions were similar. The investigation included the implementation of a detailed layers model to demonstrate how the validation of such model would be possible with the novel data

Power Electronics and Energy Management for Battery Storage Systems

The deployment of distributed renewable generation and e-mobility systems is creating a demand for improved dynamic performance, flexibility, and resilience in electrical grids. Various energy storages, such as stationary and electric vehicle batteries, together with power electronic interfaces, will play a key role in addressing these requests thanks to their enhanced functionality, fast response times, and configuration flexibility. For the large-scale implementation of this technology, the associated enabling developments are becoming of paramount importance. These include energy management algorithms; optimal sizing and coordinated control strategies of different storage technologies, including e-mobility storage; power electronic converters for interfacing renewables and battery systems, which allow for advanced interactions with the grid; and increase in round-trip efficiencies by means of advanced materials, components, and algorithms. This Special Issue contains the developments that have been published b researchers in the areas of power electronics, energy management and battery storage. A range of potential solutions to the existing barriers is presented, aiming to make the most out of these emerging technologies

Guidelines for deriving seismic fragility functions of elements at risk: Buildings, lifelines, transportation networks and critical facilities

The objective of SYNER-G in regards to the fragility functions is to propose the most appropriate functions for the construction typologies in Europe. To this end, fragility curves from literature were collected, reviewed and, where possible, validated against observed damage and harmonised. In some cases these functions were modified and adapted, and in other cases new curves were developed. The most appropriate fragility functions are proposed for buildings, lifelines, transportation infrastructures and critical facilities. A software tool was also developed for the storage, harmonisation and estimation of the uncertainty of fragility functions.JRC.G.5-European laboratory for structural assessmen

Optimum Modelling Of Flux-pipe Resonant Coils For Static And Dynamic Bidirectional Wireless Power Transfer System Applicable To Electric Vehicles

Wireless power transfer (WPT) technology enables the transfer of electrical power from the electric grid to the electric vehicles across an airgap using electromagnetic fields with the help of wireless battery chargers. WPT technology addresses most problems associated with the “plug-in” method of charging EVs like vandalization, system power losses, and safety problems due to hanging cables and opened electrical contact in addition to the flexibility of charging electric vehicles while in a static or dynamic mode of operation. Significant research has been undertaken over the years in the development of efficient WPT topologies applicable to electric vehicles. A preliminary review of these revealed that the ferrite core WPT is a promising and efficient method of charging electric vehicles. The charging method is suitable for wireless charging of electric vehicles because of its low cost, high efficiency and high power output. This research proposed the use of the flux-pipe model as a suitable ferrite core, magnetic resonance coupled-based WPT system for the charging of the electric vehicle. The traditional flux-pipe model has some specific benefits which include high coupling coefficient, high misalignment tolerance and high efficiencies under misalignment conditions. However, it has a major drawback of low power output due to the generation of an equal amount of useful and non-useful fluxes. A set of governing equations guiding the performance output of a WPT system was presented. It was identified that the losses in the WPT system can be minimized by reducing the value of the maximum magnetic flux density while the power output and efficiency can be increased by increasing the value of the coupling factor and quality factor. Based on these findings, 3-D finite element modelling was employed for the optimal design and analysis of a typical flux-pipe model for higher coupling strength, high power output and low losses. The magnetic coupling performance of flux-pipe resonant coils was enhanced with an increased number of turns along the core length relative to increasing the width of each coil turns along the coil width. The high power transfer and efficiency was attained by splitting of the coil windings into two in order to reduce intrinsic coil resistances; copper sheet was employed as a shielding material in order to reduce the eddy current losses and finally, an air gap was introduced in the ferrite core in order to reduce the core losses and invariably increased the amount of excitation current required to drive the core into saturation. The proposed optimization methodology results in the creation of two models for application in static and dynamic charging operations respectively. From the simulation results presented, the model designed for static charging operations can transfer up to 11 kW of power across the airgap at a coil-to-coil efficiency of 99.12% while the model design for dynamic charging of electric vehicles can transfer up to 13 kW of power across the airgap at a coil-to-coil efficiency of 98.64% without exceeding the average limit specified for the exposure of human body to electromagnetic fields