Design Environment E-Mobil

Electric vehicles currently represent a minority on our roads in comparison to conventional, fossil-fueled vehicles. Even with the registrations of motor vehicles, the majority is represented by combustion engine vehicles. For ecological reasons, an electrification of the drive train is required. This has brought many challenges. In contrast to the well-known structures of conventional vehicles, the experience with vehicle structures for electric vehicles are being collected. This concerns both the choice of vehicle structure, and the choice of components such as engine or energy storage. There are several possibilities for this which can be looked up in the literature [1-5].

During the development process costly and time-consuming tests on test benches and prototypes are needed due to the lack of experience. The provided access for the economy, especially for small and medium enterprises is thus high. Against this backdrop, a consortium of innovative companies from NRW (dSPACE, DMecS) and the University of Paderborn with the Department of LEA and the C-LAB have started developing a design and test environment that allows an early simulation-based test of various vehicle compositions and the interplay of the individual vehicle components. Thus it is possible to short the development process for electric vehicles on the one hand and to optimize them on the basis of extensive simulations in early stages of the design process on the other hand. As a cooperation partner of the by the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) and NRW co-finananced project, the focus of the University of Paderborn is on the development of model prototypes of automotive components, as well as the design of novel control and optimization algorithms for the controller and energy management of the electric vehicle.

The design environment should be developed in that way to create the desired vehicle structure from a library of vehicle components to compose the complete model (cf. Figure 2). The simulation environment allows realistic simulations of relevant application scenarios in the early stages of the design process. Thus, the vehicle structure can be adapted to the desired requirements such as high dynamics or best efficiency in early stages. Due to realistic simulation the control design is possible without requiring expensive and time consuming test stages. The research focuses on the development of control algorithms for the energy-management, the acceleration and braking control and the battery management in order to reduce losses in the drive and the inverter. Further research objectives are the improvement of the system dynamics by means of innovative drive systems as well as the increasing of the total efficiency of the overall system.

To verify the design environment, the design experience gained by the simulation results will be validated by test results using a real test bench at the end of the research project.

References:

[1] C.C. Chan, K.T. Chau
Modern electric vehicle technology
Oxford university press, 2001
[2] VDE
VDE-Studie – Elektrofahrzeuge – Bedeutung, Stand der Technik, Handlungsbedarf
www.VDE.com, 2010
[3] Thomas Finken, Matthias Felden, Kay Hameyer
Comparison and design of different electrical machine types regarding their applicability in hybrid electrical vehicles
VDE Congress 2010, 2010
[4] Thomas Finken, Marco Hombitzer, Kay Hameyer
Study and Comparison of several Permanet-Magnet excited Rotor Types regarding their Applicability in Electric Vehicles
IEEE, 2008
[5] Christoph Romaus, Joachim Böcker, Katrin Witting, Albert Seifried, Oleksiy Znamenshchykov
Optimal Energy Management for al Hybrid Energy Storage System Combining Batteries and Double Layer Capacitors
Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), 2009