Connected Energy Management System for Automated Electric Vehicles With Fail-Operational Powertrain and Powernet

Abstract

With the introduction of automated driving, new requirements for the design and control of a vehicle powernet and powertrain arise, since the increasing level of driving automation shifts the responsibility for passengers’ safety from a driver towards automation system. Therefore, the functionality of the subsystems required for the automated transition to a standstill in case of a failure must be guaranteed. The work presented in this paper proposes a novel and generic system architecture for the energy management of a fail-operational powernet and powertrain in fault-free and failure case operation. The underlying control strategy is based on a concept enabling safety based range extension with the main goal to complete a driving mission at the safest possible location for the passengers. The proposed E nergy M anagement S ystem (EMS) approximates a driving trajectory to the destination based on route preview, which is then used for the dynamic optimization of the torque split in a powertrain with multiple motors. In this way, the total energy required for propulsion, which is also used as an input for the energy distribution, can be accurately predicted. The optimal distribution of the energy for the supply of safety-critical subsystems and powernet auxiliaries is then estimated by solving a mixed-integer optimization problem. If the desired driving mission cannot be completed, a three-level-degradation concept adapting the driving mission is applied. The individual modules of the EMS are presented in this paper and a system architecture enabling model predictive and adaptive energy distribution in a vehicle powertrain and powernet with automated fault reactions is proposed and exemplified with simulation results.