Hardware-In-The-Loop test bench for fuel cell power system

In this paper, a Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) test bench is presented which can be used to test the controllers of fuel cell and DC/DC. This test bench consists of the fuel cell simulator which is implemented in the PC and the DC/DC simulator which is implemented in the Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). In order to ensure the accuracy, the simulation step of DC/DC simulator should be microsecond, but PC-based simulator can´t be implemented in such a small simulation step. So a real-time simulation method based on FPGA architecture is presented that every element´s model is built and then assembled them together. The single-step simulation time of the DC/DC model is up to 0.1 μs because all modules operate in parallel and the simulation algorithm is very simple. The fuel cell and DC/DC simulator are connected by AD/DA converters. Experimental results show that this HIL test bench can provide a convenient and real-time tool to test the controllers of fuel cell and DC/DC.