Controller Hardware-In-the-Loop simulation for design of power management strategies for fuel cell vehicle with energy storage

Designing digital control system for fuel cell vehicle (FCV) with energy storage (ES) power management strategy can be costly and time consuming. In this paper, Controller Hardware-In-the-Loop (CHIL) simulations are used to design power management strategies using Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) for a FCV system with ES. CHIL simulation is a rapid, low-cost prototyping and testing method for digital controller design for FCV. The idea is to replace the simulated control system with a real hardware controller, which interacts with the rest of the system that are simulated on the RTDS. In particular, two power management strategies were developed for the FCV system with ES. The FCV power train was modeled and simulated on RTDS in real time. The power management strategies were implemented using a hardware controller digital signal processor (DSP). The CHIL simulation waveforms were consistent with pure software simulation waveforms. The experiment results demonstrated that CHIL using RTDS provides a fast, safe and reliable method to design and test power management strategies for FCV with ES.