Design, modeling and simulation of electric vehicle powertrain components with DC motor drive

Abstract

The automotive industry has been in a period of energy transformation from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy due to the economic pressures resulting from the energy crisis and the need for stricter environmental protection policies. Among various clean energy systems, electric vehicles, with lithium-ion batteries have the largest market share because of their stable performance and they are a relatively mature technology. However, electric vehicles still have critical issues which need to be solved. The three main challenges are limited driving range, long charging time, and high cost. The three main challenges are all related to the battery package of the car. The battery package should both contain enough energy in order to have a certain driving range and it should also have a sufficient power capability for the accelerations and decelerations. In order to be able to estimate the energy consumption of an electric vehicles it is very important to have a proper model of the vehicle. The drive train components consist of a battery, a motor, a motor controller with H Bridge and a transmission. The design or rating of each component is a difficult task as the parameters of one component affect the power level of another one. There is therefore a risk that one component is rated inappropriately which may make the vehicle unnecessary expensive or inefficient. In this work the power train components of the electric vehicle is simulated using MATLAB (Simscape) simulation software, and the electric motor performance is simulated using C++ software. The battery pack is properly modeled in the Simscape environment since it is the heart of the electric vehicle, but the other components are taken simply from Simscape block diagrams. The vehicle is tested in theoretical drive cycle, which is travelled for a distance of 11 km and a duration of 1180 seconds. The result shows the vehicle speed follows the path of the drive cycle reference speed. All simulation results are plotted and discussed.