Health-Aware Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy for Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Abstract

Fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles (FCHEVs) are gaining increasing attention as the transition toward sustainable mobility accelerates. One of the key challenges in the application of FCHEVs is to achieve an optimal power split between the fuel cell and the battery. Traditional energy management strategies mainly focus on minimizing energy consumption. However, from a life-cycle perspective, the degradation of system components also has a significant impact on overall efficiency. This thesis proposes a health-aware equivalent consumption minimization strategy that considers both fuel consumption and component degradation. The degradation related costs are incorporated into the traditional cost function, which otherwise accounts only for hydrogen consumption. An analytical solution is then developed to obtain the optimal solution for the control problem. To reduce the computational complexity and make the cost function differentiable, Taylor expansion is employed and the cost function is reformulated as a piecewise quadratic function. The proposed method is implemented and evaluated within Volvo’s Global Simulation Platform, enabling system-level validation under representative driving conditions. The simulation results show that the proposed method can significantly mitigate fuel cell degradation, with an acceptable increase in battery degradation and fuel consumption. Meanwhile, the charge sustaining performance and drivability are largely preserved.