A Real-Time Prognostic-Based Control Framework for Hybrid Electric Vehicles

The increasing popularity of electric vehicles is driven by their compatibility with sustainable energy goals. However, the decline in the performance of energy storage systems, such as batteries, due to their degradation puts electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles at a disadvantage compared to traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. This paper presents a prognostic-based control framework for hybrid electric vehicles to reduce the cost of operating hybrid electric vehicles by considering the degradation of energy storage systems. The strategy utilizes a degradation forecasting model of electrical components to predict their degradation pattern and uses the prediction to control hybrid electric vehicles via their energy management systems to reduce the degradation of components. A real-time controller hardware-in-the-loop is set up to run the proposed strategy. An hybrid electric vehicle model is developed on Typhoon (i.e., a real-time simulator), which is connected to two layers, energy management and degradation forecasting layer, deployed in Raspberry Pis, respectively. All these components are communicated through CAN communication, where the actual operating condition of the vehicle is sent from Typhoon to each Raspberry Pis to implement the proposed control strategy. With this approach, the cost of operating hybrid electric vehicles can be reduced, making them more competitive than their combustion engine counterparts shown in both numerical simulations and the CHIL experiment.