In comparison to the state of knowledge of standard internal combustion vehicles, there is relatively little known on how to best implement component sub-systems and best integrate these systems together to create a hybrid electric vehicle. Thus it is of paramount importance to have accurate models of hybrid electric vehicles to aid in the development of these systems These models permit design concepts to be tested before they are implemented allowing designers to fine tune component sub-systems and develop better vehicles In addition, using these models the designers are also able to test and optimize different operating strategies
Our goal was to develop a modular model for hybrid electric vehicles This model is implemented in Simulink, a graphical programming language based on Matlab The greatest advantage to the modular approach is that each sub-system is a separate module The five main sub-systems include vehicle dynamics, transmission, electric motor, auxiliary power unit and energy store Different sub-system modules, such as a battery system, can be easily interchanged with other modules representing the same function to analyze the performance of various hybrid configurations A number of modular building blocks have been constructed representing most of the typical sub-systems in hybrid electric vehicles
This work develops the general Simulink model, details the modular building blocks and presents examples of typical studies conducted using our model