Mission Management for Fuel Cell Electric Trucks - a MPC approach

MSc Thesis proposal Volvo Group:


Mission Management for Fuel Cell Electric Trucks


About us


Sustainability including climate change are the challenges of our generation. Our contribution is to offer leading transport and infrastructure solutions enabling societies to prosper in a sustainable way.
Powertrain Strategic Development at Volvo has the responsibility to explore and develop new sustainable propulsion solutions, including hydrogen-based propulsion technologies. We are Predictive Energy Management team, inside Powertrain Strategic Development department. As the team’s name suggests, we work in the area of energy management, where we optimize the energy using the predicted information such as topography, curvature, and speed limits from the road ahead of the vehicle. Our goal is to deliver a platform solution to optimize the energy consumption for all three powertrain variants in Volvo (ICE, Fuel Cell and BEV).
In the area of Mission Management, previously we have worked for conventional (ICE) trucks within some European projects. And currently, we are working with another company to develop the same for BEVs. With this master-thesis, we hope to build upon the knowledge we have gained so far and apply it to a Fuel Cell truck.


Thesis Background


At Volvo, we are committed to the ambitions and climate change goals of the Paris Agreement. From a lifecycle perspective, most of the emissions occur during the use phase of our products. Therefore, our priority is to develop solutions that reduce the carbon emissions from transportation. One such transport solution that we are working on today is Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) for demanding long-haul applications, that is to complement the Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV), which have a limited range.
These new technologies bring several operational and engineering challenges compared to conventional ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) trucks, some of which we want to solve by doing Mission Management, by optimizing over the whole transport mission.
Problem motivating the project
Operational Challenges for a FCEV
The amount of energy that can be stored in a Fuel Cell truck is significantly lower compared to a diesel truck, which significantly lowers the range one can drive with a single refuelling. Moreover, as Hydrogen refuelling stations are expensive to build, the density of fuelling stations are going to be low, also resulting in ques at the stations. Also, the fuel prices may vary between stations.
Technical Challenges for a FCEV


1. Batteries in a Fuel Cell Electric trucks is smaller compared to BEVs, so in order to recuperate/break with max capacity its desirable to empty the battery before a downhill.
2. Fuel Cell systems have a slow transient response, and transients and turning the fuel cells On and Off has an impact on the FC health.
Doing a global optimization of the whole transport mission, considering the location of fuelling stations and fuel price, vehicle characteristics, topography, mission requirements, traffic, weather etc. has a potential to solve these challenges.


Through this master thesis we want to explore the limitations and benefits of having such an optimization layer with full mission information.


Objective or Research Question
How can we optimize the mission for a FCEV application?
What are the limitations/challenges and quantifiable benefits of such a solution?
What are the important parameters and dynamics to consider for mission management of FCEV?
How to formulate the optimization problem? Reasoning for simplifying or excluding certain dynamics/parameters.



Deliverables (flexible)
Formulation of the optimization problem.
Integration with Complete Vehicle simulation models (provided by Volvo).
Simulation analysis is done on a few use cases and vehicle variants (defined by Volvo).



Requirement on student background:
Master students in Automotive, Control, Mechatronics or Engineering Physics.
Interest in Control, Optimization, MATLAB/Simulink.
Please submit your CV and motivation letter.



Supervision and examination:


Powertrain Strategic Development, GTT, Volvo Group
Chalmers University of Technology
Thesis Level: Master
Language: English
Starting date: Spring 2023
Number of students: 1
Physical location: Mostly at Volvo Lundby (CampX).
Tutor:
Volvo contact person: Olof Lindgärde (olof.lindgarde@volvo.com)
Academic supervisor and examiner: TBD