Cycle-based design methodology of hybrid electric vehicle powertrain: Application to fuel cell vehicles

Energy sources and storage devices of (H)EV powertrain are usually designed for the maximum ratings of the drivability conditions (cruise speed, gradeability and acceleration). This leads to a costly solution because the components are oversized. This paper develops a methodology based on the combination of the standard driving cycles to optimize the sizing of the devices. It´s applied to the design of the FC stack and the Energy Storage System associated (battery or/and ultra capacitor). The numbers of series and parallel branches respectively Ns_i and Np_i are computed so as to minimize an objective function, to fulfill the performance requirements and respect the technologic constraints. Simulation results illustrate the feasibility of the methodology.