Abstract:
In the recent decades, hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) have gained popularity within the automotive industry for several reasons. Most notably, this is because of their fuel efficiency advantage over traditionally powered vehicles due to their ability to combine more than one energy storage medium within their drivetrains. Of interest in this project is an HEV that combines a gasoline engine with a high voltage battery capable of powering a motor that is coupled with the engine to propel the vehicle. The greatest area for efficiency improvement is within the control strategy employed by this vehicle. To minimize the costs associated with research and development of HEV control strategies, vehicle simulations are becoming very popular. The goal of this project is to develop a model for a Ford Escape HEV by comparing the simulation results to actual vehicle data. When completed, the control scheme for this vehicle can be modified and used to research the effects of various control scheme modifications. To validate the model created for this project, data from previous research performed on the Escape will be used. The testing was performed using a chassis dynamometer at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and their Powertrain Systems Analysis Toolkit (PSAT). Although the PSAT model was successfully built, an improvement on the simulation results was expected by using GT Suite to model the vehicle. After the model was built and tested the simulation results were used to prove that the simulated components maintained operation within their actual limits and the simulation results were compared to the previous vehicle test results in regard to the motor, engine and battery operation. By comparing these various results, a clear trend was present between the actual and simulated vehicle data and the model was assumed to be a valid representation of the actual Ford Escape Hybrid. The model developed for this research also showed improvement on the results of the previous PSAT testing. Thus, this research produced a reasonable model of the Ford Escape Hybrid that can be further improved upon in future work.
