Hybrid Electric Power and Energy Laboratory Hardware-in-the-Loop and Vehicle Model Implementation

The power system for the Future Combat System's (FCS) family of manned ground vehicles will not only need to satisfy mobility requirements, but also need to provide continuous and pulsed power for weapons, armaments and other auxiliary loads. Investigating hybrid power technologies has been an active research area for the U.S. Army RDECOM's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) Power and Energy System Integration Laboratory (P&E SIL). The P&E SIL is located in Santa Clara, CA and is maintained by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Current P&E SIL efforts include imposing realistic loads on notional combat vehicle subsystems in order to evaluate components, such as motors and batteries. Equally important research is being conducted through the application of realistic driver/commander inputs which will aid in the validation of vehicle designs, control systems and vehicle power management architectures capable of meeting the mobility and non-mobility power and energy demands of the future battlefield. This paper describes the integration of the hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) hybrid-electric power system with a high fidelity vehicle model (HFVM) within a real-time execution environment.