Experimental Case Studies

Abstract

This chapter illustrates, with the help of two case studies, both involving design, implementation and experimental validation, the design process for energy management strategies. The first case is for a micro hybrid vehicle. Here, another method to numerically solve the optimization problem is introduced, namely Quadratic Programming, to handle the multiple decision variables used in the problem set-up for this case. The optimal solution for the powersplit is embedded in a Model Predictive Control frame work. The numerical solution allows a comparison between an optimal numerical strategy and a real-time strategy, as implemented in the vehicle. The implementation uses computing facilities that go beyond the standard ones in one of the vehicle’s computational units. The second case study is for a heavy-duty freight vehicle, namely a delivery truck. The implementation in this case uses a standard computational unit of the vehicle, which is possible by using a map-based approach. The experimental results show that the implementation of the optimal strategy is feasible and that this strategy achieves a better fuel economy than the built-in rule-based strategy.