Aerodynamic-aware coordinated control of following speed and power distribution for hybrid electric trucks

Abstract

In a truck platoon, a smaller inter-vehicle gap reduces aerodynamic drag, which is beneficial for energy savings, but can also elevate the risk of crashing against the lead vehicle. Therefore, a reasonable speed for the following truck should be planned to balance safety and energy consumption. Moreover, for hybrid electric trucks, optimizing the power split among different energy sources also contributes to energy savings. Following distance and power distribution are therefore coupled. To achieve cost savings in a hybrid truck following situation, a co-optimization should be performed on speed planning and power split to achieve an optimal trade-off between safety, drag reduction, and energy consumption. In this paper, such an approach is developed and analyzed. Model predictive control is adopted to implement the optimization strategy. Real-world speed profiles are used to assess the proposed method, and the results demonstrate that the coordinated control method outperforms a manual following strategy by flexibly tuning the following distance, resulting in cost savings of about 5.2%.