Hydraulic hybrid passenger vehicle: Fuel savings possibilities

Abstract

This work proposes to model a small series hydraulic hybrid vehicle (SHHV) for the power demand of a real driving cycle. The real driving cycle was measured with a low-cost Bluetooth Scanner connected to the On-Board Diagnostic (OBD) port of the vehicle and applied to a computational model. The hydraulic power to drive the modeled SHHV was supplied by a hydraulic pump and/or by an accumulator. Optimization tools were used to size the hydraulic components. Furthermore, the optimization tools were also used to calculate the values of the control variables for activating the pump, accumulator and the hydraulic motor, in order to have the minimum fuel consumption by the vehicle’s combustion engine. The model implemented had its fuel consumption reduced by 37% in relation to the passenger car utilized for the driving cycle data acquisition.