Development of design tool for hybrid power systems of hybrid electric military combat vehicles

This paper introduces a developed hybrid power modeling and simulation tool for series hybrid electric military combat vehicles. A simulation tool for determining optimal hybrid power in hybrid components such as motor, engine, generator, and storages and for evaluating designed driving control strategy and energy management strategy is essential in designing a hybrid system. The developed tool is based on the MATLAB/Simulink with simple GUI interface. It supports various series hybrid structures of military vehicles, driving cycles, and driving control strategies. It supports two types of analysis methods: a forward facing method and a backward facing method. In this research, in order to determine the motor´s power and spec, the developed tool is incorporated with the commercial multibody dynamics software, VirtualLab/Motion developed by LMS International. The objectives of the iterative works between design of optimal hybrid power systems and optimal driving control strategy include reducing the overall fuel consumption and optimizing the mobility performance to cost, mass and volume space claims of the vehicles´ power systems, and enabling those vehicles with enhanced electrical power generation and storage capabilities useful for field operations, too. A 20ton 8×8 series hybrid electric vehicle is considered as design example. This paper shows the results of determined hybrid components´ power and shows the SOC variation and fuel efficiency for various driving strategies.