Cabin heat thermal management in hybrid vehicles using model predictive control

This paper describes a Model Predictive Control (MPC) design for the thermal management of cabin heat in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs). Due to the augmented complexity of the energy flow in recent energy-efficient vehicles in comparison to conventional vehicles, control degrees of freedom are increased, as many components can achieve the same functionality of heating up the cabin temperature. This paper proposes an MPC strategy to distribute the workload between available components in the vehicle, while achieving multiple objectives, such as fuel efficiency and heat-power reference tracking, and enforcing various constraints. First, a simplified linear dynamical model subject to linear time-varying (LTV) constraints is identified, based on high-fidelity simulations on a full nonlinear model. Then an MPC controller is designed to achieve multiple control objectives by manipulating different inputs. Simulation results indicate that the proposed approach is suitable for such multi-objective automotive control problems.