A Simulation Study of Power Management for a

Series Hydraulic Hybrid Vehicle

Chih-Keng Chen, Tri-Vien Vu, and Chih-Wei Hung
Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Da-yeh University
168 University Road, Dacun, Changhua, Taiwan 515 ROC.
Phone: (+886-4) 851-1888 ext. 2108
Fax: (+886-4) 851-1224
E-mail: ckchen@mail.dyu.edu.tw

Abstract Possessing the flexibility of engine management and regenerative braking properties, series hydraulic hybrid vehicle) has been an attractive candidate for
a better fuel economy automobile. As in any hybrid power system, the presence of
two or more different power sources caused many power management issues.
These issues become more difficult for hydraulic hybrid technology when the hydraulic accumulator is a low energy density component. The main purpose of the
development of the control strategies is to propose a better approach to coordinate
multiple power sources. In this work, a model of the series hydraulic hybrid truck
is established. Dynamic programming (DP) methodology is applied to estimate an
optimal-benchmark solution. A rule-based control strategy is utilized to predict the
fuel economy improvement of the SHHV system. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategies are figured out by simulation results.
Index Terms- Dynamic-Programming, Hydraulic Hybrid
Vehicle, Power Management, Rule-Based.

1. INTRODUCTION
Gasoline depletion risks forecasting and environmental concerns are the main reasons that motivate the development for a higher efficient transportation system
nowadays. In 2009, more than 70% of U.S oil consumption was consumed by
transportation sector in which light-duty vehicles accounted for 45% [1]. Hence
improving the efficiency of light-duty vehicle fleet is one of the most effective approaches to reduce the dependency on oil.
In all types of hybrid vehicle, the main function of supervisory controller is to
coordinate multiple power sources to satisfy the power demand of the driveline
with minimum fuel consumption in the most convenient way. In general, control

strategies of the hybrid propulsion systems can be classified into three categories:
rule-based, semi-optimal, and global optimal. Among these, the rule-based control
strategy is a real-time implementable power management. This control strategy
uses several rules that would consider the vehicle load level and maintain the engine at its efficient operating range. Most papers regarding rule-based control
strategy for HHV used the state-of-charge (SOC) of accumulator as the sole state
variable [2]-[5].
Dynamic programming is one of methodologies to find a global optimization
solution for sequential or multi-stages decision problems. The algorithm searches
for optimal decision at discrete points in a time sequence with chosen cost functions. In the hybrid system, the power split between the two energy sources is selected as the control variable and the total equivalent fuel consumption over a given driving cycle is the cost function of DP technique. DP has been shown to be a
powerful tool for optimal control in automotive applications. It can be used to optimize powertrain parameters, gear shifting strategy in conventional vehicles [6][8] and for the control variables replied on torque split or power split factors in
hybrid vehicles [2] [9] [10]. DP also has been successfully applied to replace the
Rule-based control strategy for hybrid electric vehicle [11] or to optimize the
Rule-Based control strategy for hydraulic-electric hybrid vehicle [12].
In this work, a series hydraulic hybrid propulsion system tailored for a lightduty delivery truck has been established. The remainder of this paper is organized
as follows. The analysis and modeling of the system will be discussed in the second section of this paper. Then, the fundamental formulation of DP technique will
be introduced in the first part of section three. The simulation results of DP application and the improved rule-based control strategies will be present and discussed
in the second part of that section. The main contributions of this work will be concluded in the last section.

2. MODELING OF A SHHV

2.1. System Configuration Description

This paper proposes a configuration of SHHV for a Rear-wheel-drive 3.5 ton
Light-duty class II truck. The schematic and control signal path of the system is
shown in Fig. 1. The specifications of the vehicle are listed in Table 1. In this configuration, Diesel Engine E is connected to hydraulic pump P1; P/M unit P2 is
connected to the rear wheels through differential DF; high-pressure accumulator
Acc functions as a secondary power source of SHHV system. When the vehicle is
in the traction mode, P/M P2 operates as a motor to propel the wheels. Hydraulic
power is provided by hydraulic accumulator Acc and/or pump P1. When the brake
event occurs, P2 will work as a pump to convert the vehicle kinetic energy into

3
ON/OFF
ON/OFF
ON/OFF

V1

Pressure

Central
Controller

Throttle Opening

P1- Displacement control

V3

P2

P1

Engine Speed

V2

A1

DF

Operation
Commands

E
A2

P2 - Displacement control
Vehicle speed

Mechanical
brake
controller
Mechanical connection
Signals
Hydraulic connection

Fig. 1 Schematic and Control Signal Paths of SHHV.

hydraulic power. Thus, the braking energy thus will be captured and stored by
Acc. The mechanical braking system will be activated in emergency event or in
case the pressure of Acc exceeding its maximum working pressure during vehicle
braking mode. The required driving/braking torque is satisfied by adjusting the
displacement of P2. Since the engine is decoupled from the wheel loads, it can be
easily controlled to operate at desired location. The desired torque and speed of
the engine can be achieved by control the displacement of P1 and the throttle position of the engine.

2.2. System Modeling and Component Sizing

In a SHHV, the overall fuel economy fundamentally depends on the efficiency of the fuel converter, the hydraulic, and the vehicle mass and losses. Since most
of trucks already use highly efficient diesel engines and the truck weight is dictated by the payload, tailoring the design and control parameters of hydraulic components for the vehicle with a certain driving cycle offers high potential significant
improvement of the fuel economy. The objective of this work is to modify an existed delivery truck to establish a SHH one, so the parameters of the engine and
the driveline are given. Hydraulic component are selected and sized to ensure that
the proposed SHHV can work under a given driving cycle and has highest potential of fuel economy improvement.
The first parameter to consider is the capacitor of the accumulator since this
parameter will determine the available energy that an accumulator can absorb or
delivery. The available energy amount of a bladder accumulator can be estimate
approximately by below equation.

Eacc p0V0k p

k 1 / k

p0

k 1/ k

/ k 1

(1)

where V0 is the capacitor, p0 is the initial pressure, p is current pressure, and k is

the specific heat ratio the accumulator. From above expression, it is obviously that
with a given accumulator, the capacitor is fixed and the amount of the accumulator
energy is depended on its initial and maximum working pressure. Therefore, increasing the working pressure is a solution to improve the energy density. However, the noise, the vibration, and the sealing problems of a high-pressure hydraulic
system must be taken into account. Considering the safety aspect and the working
pressure limitation of hydraulic pump, the maximum pressure of 330bar is selected. With a fixed highest working pressure, the optimal initial pressure of the accumulator can be estimate by solving the equation dEacc/dp0 = 0.
With low energy density property, the accumulator only provides a limited
amount of energy to propel the vehicle. The effort to increase the size of accumulator to lengthen the time span of accumulator propelling may be inefficient when
considering the added cost of system mass increase. Hence, for a predefined driving cycle, the size of accumulator in a hydraulic hybrid system is normally calculated to be large enough in order to store the maximum braking energy. This hypothesis is simply expressed by Eq.(2).

Eacc Ebrk ,max

(2)

where Ebrk,max is the maximum potential energy of the vehicle. Neglected the effect
of rolling resistance and air drag, the energy is estimated as below.
2
Ebrk 0.5mvmax

(3)

where m[kg] is the mass and vmax is the maximum working speed of the vehicle. From above equations, the desired capacitor of the accumulator in the SHHV
working on a predefined driving cycle can be found.
The second parameter that affects the drivability of the vehicle is the volumetric displacement of the hydraulic pump/motor. Assumed the vehicle travels in a
level road, the total load torque on the wheels of the vehicle is given by:

Tl r ma Ad v 2 mgf r

(4)

where r[m] is the tire radius [-] is the equivalent rotation mass factor, a[m/s2] is
the acceleration of the vehicle; Ad is the air-drag coefficient, fr is the rolling friction coefficient, g = 9.81 [m/s2] is the gravity acceleration.
The maximum torque that the pump/motor can afford is:

TP 2,max D2,max p

(5)

where D2,max is the maximum displacement [m3/rad] and p is the pressure difference across the pump/motor. From (4) and (5), the maximum displacement of the

pump/motor P2 is estimated by:

D2 max Tl ,max pmin / idf

(6)

where Tl,max is the maximum loading torque estimated from the given driving cycle, pmin is the minimum working pressure of the hydraulic system, and idf[-] is the
differential gear ratio of the vehicle.
The hydraulic pump P1 is initially sized to satisfy the requirement of engine
power absorption when the pressure of the hydraulic system is at the minimum
state. The maximum displacement of the pump P1 is estimated by:

D1max Pe,max / pmine, p max

(7)

where Pe,max [W] is the maximum power, we,pmax[rad/s] is the speed of the engine at its maximum power.
Based on MATLAB/SIMULINK, the system is modeled as shown in Fig. 2.
The component models are used directly from the built-in SimScape/Simulink
toolbox. The parameter of the system using in this simulation can be found in [16].

3. CONTROL STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND

SIMULATION RESULTS

3.1 Fundamental of DP
In the SHHV system, when the system configuration, component parameters,
and driving cycle are defined, the fuel economy strongly depends on the coordinating of two power sources to propel the system. The objective of DP application
is to find out optimal power split factor u that will minimize the fuel consumption
mf of the engine. The SOC of hydraulic accumulator is selected as the model
state variable. Since there is no power split device available for SHHV. The purpose of applying DP is to estimate the optimal power threshold, the throttle position of the engine, and the displacement of the hydraulic pump.
The optimization problem of minimizing the total fuel mass consumed over
Japan 1015 driving cycle can be stated as the discrete-time optimal control problem as below.
N 1

min J u m f uk , k

uk U k

k 0

(8)

6
Drive Cycle

VehSpd
Acc_Press
Eng_Spd

Cmd

Throttle

Throttle

Spd

P1_Dis

P1_Dis

Pressure

P2_Dis

P2_Dis

Engine Speed

Mec_Brk

Scopes

Fuel Economy

Mec_Brk

Controller
A1

Throttle
Throttle
Crank-Shaft

IC Engine E

P1_Dis
Disp

High Press. Acc.

P2_P
P1_P

Shaft

P1_T

P2_T
Low Press. Acc.

Enigne-Pump P1
A2

P2_Dis
Disp
shaft

Drive-Pump P2

Hydraulic Valve

Drive Shaft

Vehicle
Dynamic

Fig. 2 Simulink Model of SHHV.

subject to

xk 1 f k xk , uk xk

(9)

x( N ) x(0)

(10)

N 660 / Ts 1

(11)

and

where mf is the fuel mass consumption at each time step, xk is the state variable
of the system at step k, Ts is the time step.
In order to apply DP algorithm, the control variable u and the state variable x
are needed to discretize. Unlike the hybrid electric vehicle system, the state variable of the HHV system can be varied from zero to one. Due to the limitation of the
engine power of our current experiment platform, the lower bound of the control
variable is select as zero. This prevents the engine from charging the accumulator
during braking event to avoid unnecessary and inefficient energy conversion and
storing the regenerative brake energy effectively. The state variable and the control variable are gridded into 50 points. The general function dpm, written in
matlab [13] is adopted in this work.
The first simulation is to consider the effect of the end-point constraint of the
SOC to the fuel economy of the proposed system. This constraint implied that
there is no pre-charged energy in the accumulator during the test. The engine does
not provide any unused energy stored in the accumulator. Different end-point constraint is evaluated and the results are shown in Fig. 3.

Speed (km/h)

The fuel economy of the system with different end-point constraints is estimated and fitted as shown in Fig. 4. The results show that when the initial SOC is
small the energy assistant from accumulator is small. In this case the engine must
operate at its high rate power which apart from its optimal region. However, if the
SOC is too high, the space of the accumulator reserved for braking energy is not
enough, an amount of braking energy will not be recovery hence the fuel economy
of the system is reduced. The best fuel economy of the system is of 21.5 Km/L if
the initial and the final value of the SOC is about 90%. The behaviors of the system with DP are shown in Fig. 5. Interestingly, the SOC can go down closely to
zero, it means that the stored energy can be fully used at each vehicle start and the
accumulator has enough space for effective regenerative braking. Besides, the
whole braking energy over the driving test schedule is captured and reused. Mechanical braking system is not involved during the test. It also can be seen that the
operating power of the engine remain nearly constant even when the demand
power is low or high. When the power demand is low, the exceeded power from
engine is absorbed by the accumulator. When the power demand is high, extra
power is assisted by the accumulator. As a result, the engine can operate at its
high fuel efficiency region. In addition, avoiding transient operating of the engine
and concerning its low energy density characteristic, the accumulator is only used
to absorb the exceeded engine power during tracking phase but not charging directly. Hence, the power split factor is limited within zero and one.
100
50
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

100

200

300
Time (s)

400

500

600

State of Charge, SOC

0.75

0.5

0.25

Fig.2 Several SOC Histories with Different Final Constraint.

Fuel Economy, Km/L

22
Estimation
Fitting

21
20
19
18
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4
0.5
0.6
SOC Final Constraint

0.7

0.8

0.9

Fig. 3 The Relationship between Fuel Economy and Final Constraint on System SOC.

3.2 Improved Rule-Based Control Strategy

Speed (km/h)

The results of DP application indicated that the optimal SOC initial condition
is about 90%, the optimal power threshold is about 20 kW, and the optimal range
of accumulator pressure is from 150bar to 250bar. From above analysis, the primary rule-based control strategy is derived by extracting the optimal control trajectories from dpm results. The behaviors of the system with the improved control
strategy under Japan 1015 drive cycle is shown in Fig. 13. When the high power
demand occurs, the pre-charge energy in accumulator will be used to provide the
exceeded power, hence the engine will not necessary to be shifted to the higher
power region. In 70
addition, the pressure of accumulator is kept at low value before
each hard deceleration event.
35 the effects of different control strategies over the performance
A summary of
and the fuel economy improvement of proposed SHHV system is given in Table
0
III. The fuel economy
improvement
the system
0
100
200 of 300
400 was
500estimated
600 with
700two differState of Charge

0.5

Power Split
Factor, u

0.5

0
1

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

0
0

Pe

Pacc

Pdem

Powers, kW

40
20
0
-20
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

cm3/rev

Displacement

Pump/Motor

700
Pump

50
0
-50
0

100

200

300
400
Time,sec

500

600

Fig.4 SHHV DP results over Japan 1015 Driving Cycle.

700

ent criteria. In the first criterion, the fuel economy of the system working on Hydrostatic was selected as the baseline to estimate the fuel economy improvement
of the system with other control strategies; in the second criterion, the fuel economy of 11.42 Km/L was selected.

4. Conclusion
In this work, DP optimal control technique has been applied successfully for the
SHHV system. The optimal trajectories has been studied and adopted to establish
implementable rule-based control strategy. The control strategy has been simulated in the MATLAB/Simulink environment to predict the improvement of fuel
economy of the proposed system in different modes.
Simulation results show that the fuel economy improvement of proposed system using rule-based control strategy can be up to 80% in comparing with a traditional hydrostatic control strategy and up to 60% in comparing with MYs 2012Vehicle
Speed (km/h)

80
Vehicle speed

40
20

Vehicle
Speed Error km/h

100

200

300

400

500

600

100

200

300

400

500

600

100

200

300

400

500

600

100

200

300
Time(s)

400

500

600

1
0
-1

300
200
100

P/M Normalized
Displacement

Accumulator
Pressure (bar)

Vehicle Speed Ref

60

1
0
-1

Fig. 5 System Behavior of the Optimal-Thermostatic Control Strategy.

Table 1 Summary of the SHHV Predicted Performance and Fuel Economy Improvement.
No. Name

Fuel Economy
[Km/L]

Criterion 1

Criterion 2

Hydrostatic

10.15

Thermostatic

12.01

18.33

5.17

Optimal-Thermostatic 18.13

78.64

58.76

DP

112

88

21.5

Fuel Economy
Improvement
[%]

10

2016 standards. With DP technique, the results can be up to 112% and 88% respectively.
In the future, since the power split device in SHHV has not been available, it is
necessary to take the engine speed, engine-pump displacement and pump/motor
displacement as control variables into account for more reasonable and accuracy
problem.
Acknowledgments This work is supported by the National Science Council under Grant NSC
101-3113-E-006-008 and by Taiwan Automotive Research and Testing Center.

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