Abstract
The design of the optimal power distribution system (PDS or powertrain) for fuel cell-based vehicles is a complex task due to PDS comprising one or more power converters, several types of secondary energy sources, a fuel cell, several control loops, and protections, among others. The optimized powertrain design tries to minimize the mass, volume, and cost, and also to improve system efficiency, fuel economy (both hydrogen and electricity), and vehicle autonomy. This paper analyzes the influence of four different factors that deeply affect the optimal powertrain design, in particular: the minimum power delivered by the fuel cell, the storage of the recovered energy from the regenerative braking periods, the battery technology, and the maximum battery state-of-charge variation. The analysis of these factors is carried out over a set of 9 different fuel cell-based architectures applied to a light vehicle, and a 10th architecture corresponding to a pure electric vehicle. This analysis provides the knowledge of how these design factors affect the mass, volume, and cost of the optimal power distribution architectures, and how they can be considered in the design.
Highlights
Fuel cell (FC)-based vehicles present growing reliability and autonomy [1,2,3], which is the reason they are beginning to be considered a strong alternative to internal combustion engine vehicles
One of the challenges of fuel cell-based vehicles is the design of the power distribution system (PDS or powertrain)
Minimizing the mass and cost of the powertrain is of great importance to the maximization of autonomy and fuel saving, and the achievement of a competitive price
Summary
Fuel cell (FC)-based vehicles present growing reliability and autonomy [1,2,3], which is the reason they are beginning to be considered a strong alternative to internal combustion engine vehicles. Considering, as a starting point, the optimal sizing procedure presented in [23], this paper analyzes the influence of four different design factors on the mass and cost of the PDS, continuing with the work presented in [28], in which the influence of the driving profile is analyzed These factors are the minimum power delivered by the fuel cell, the energy storage from the regenerative braking periods, the battery technology, and, the maximum battery state-of-charge variation. These design factors can vary significantly in the mass, volume, and cost of the complete PDS and the selection of the optimal power distribution architectures.
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